Prison bound

Don’t EVER kid yourself that “they can’t do this” or “they wouldn’t do that.” If the last four nightmarish years have proved anything, it’s that there is absolutely no limit to what they can, would, or WILL do.

Trump New York trial: Jailing former president could spark ‘mass protests,’ experts say
Donald Trump received the clearest threat of jail time yet in his New York criminal trial after a judge said on Tuesday that “jail may be a necessary punishment” for future gag order violations from the former president, a statement legal experts say could have sweeping consequences on his 2024 presidential election bid.

Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the criminal hush money trial against Trump, found him in contempt for nine violations of his gag order due to various social media posts about witnesses in the trial, with a fine of $1,000 for each instance and an order to delete the posts. Trump, the Republican front-runner to face off against President Joe Biden, has decried his four criminal cases as “election interference,” a claim that legal experts told the Washington Examiner could be authenticated if Merchan decides to jail him over social media posts before the trial’s expected end in late May.

“Judge Merchan is operating within his discretion, but I think he would be an automaton if he didn’t appreciate that the world is watching him and how any imprisonment would be viewed by most as true election interference — not in the hyperbolic way that Trump routinely says this trial is amounting to by its very existence,” Alton Harmon, legal analyst and corporate general counsel, told the Washington Examiner.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the Washington Examiner it would mark an “unprecedented step” to jail a former president and candidate during an election year, a move that would come with its own set of public policy problems.

While Harmon and Rahmani both said jailing Trump seems unlikely, Rahmani stressed that doing so “may lead to mass protests or even civil unrest.”

“I suspect it would cause widespread condemnation and countrywide protests from his base,” Harmon said.

Real Americans damned well better hope so; the consequences, both short- and long-term, of failing to rise up in righteous anger against such outrageous, rule-of-law-flouting perfidy are too dire to bear thinking about, not just for Trump or his campaign but for the whole fargin’ country. Mere “protests” should be the very least of the worries these scurrilous, lawless blaggards must take into consideration.

Shannon Frison, an attorney and former associate justice for the Massachusetts Superior Court, told the Washington Examiner she views Merchan’s decision a “thoughtful order.”

“I do think that the threat of incarceration is real because that is what Merchan has at his disposal,” Frison said, adding that the only options for him are continuing to fine $1,000 per violation or jail time.

When asked whether a judge in Merchan’s position must consider the threat of political instability or unrest when he makes the threat to jail a former president, Frison said, “I think you have to.”

“Given the effect that he has on what we call his base, a segment of Republicans...I think that him being incarcerated for any amount of time for any behavior would absolutely have some effect on” the public’s reaction, said Frison, who served on the bench for 15 years.

Again: don’t kid yourselves that they won’t do it, that they wouldn’t DARE to. Think rather about what WE are going to do to THEM when they do, as Grant famously commended to his skittish soldiers as the proper attitude towards General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, a wily, resourceful foe the men of the Army of the Potomac had come to regard as invincible.