The NY v Trump judge ‘crossed a line’: Tom Dupree

I want to go to Andy McCarthy, Tom Dupree, our legal Eagles on this. Tom, what do you make of the threat on the part of the judge now to really come down hard on Donald Trump if if he keeps violating these gag order issues as he sees them, the next step would be to throw the former president in jail. That, that that seems bizarre, but what do you make of it? Well, I, I agree that would be bizarre. I mean, like so many other things in this whole trial, it would be an act without precedent in American history. But look, Neal, I think the significance here of what happened this morning is that the judge kind of has crossed the line by expressly telling Trump that if he doesn’t comply with the gag order, he’s going to put him in jail. The judge is going to have to follow through with this now having been on the record as saying this. In other words, if you make a threat and you draw a clear line in the sand as to what behavior you’re not going to accept, you have to be prepared to follow through with that. If that line is crossed, it’s going to put the judge in a challenging position. Unless Trump does a 180 and stops commenting on the case, which I I will say seems unlikely, I think the judge is going to have some pretty hard decisions to make in the weeks ahead. Is there another tack the judge could take? Andy, I mean $1000 to a multi billionaire is is sort of ridiculous. It’s certainly not something that gets him to change his posture if that’s what the judge wants him to do. But could he raise for example every time something like this happens it’s 100,000 or $500,000. What what what could he do now it’s a criminal case Neil. So he’s he’s limited by law in terms of the monetary amount that he could give $1000 toss likely yeah that’s and that’s the reason why it’s still $1000 even after last week. To Tom’s point I agree that he’s he’s drawing a a harder line in the sand. I don’t think it’s quite as you know, when you look at the fine print and squint enough, he’s not exactly saying if you do this again, I’m going to put you in jail. He’s coming close to that. And as a result, I’ve been thinking about the same thing you guys have been thinking about, which is, is there any middle position? It seems to me that it would be politically catastrophic for Democrats for Trump to be put in a jail like Rikers Island for this. But I might see this judge maybe giving him home confinement for a couple of weeks. That would make it very difficult for him to, for example, campaign on Wednesdays and on the weekend when he tries to get around the country and do the work he can’t do because he’s chained to the courthouse during the week. I think that probably there’s worse places you could be in home confinement than Trump Tower. So that might not be as politically damaging. But I still think I’m, I’m with Tom. I think the, the prospect of detaining a former president is just very, very disturbing in this case. All right. We understand the jury has been dismissed today. So this is all wrapping up a little bit earlier than planned. So the president, the former president might be coming out fairly soon. But Tom, the the, the fact that we were listening to some of the finance guys today, Jeffrey Mcconnery and the court Deborah Tarasoff of handling accounts payable for upwards of 6070 accounts. I forgot what it was. They were obviously looking at who was signing the checks. It was writing off on the checks and what what is the big deal? If it is Donald Trump, it’s his company after all, and he is signing some of these checks. Is that significant one way or the other? Well, look, I will say this, today’s testimony by comparison to what we heard on prior days and on Friday with Hope Hicks today was sleep inducing. We heard a lot of testimony about accounting. We heard a lot of testimony about General Ledger’s and other terms that only an accountant or lawyer could understand. A young man, this is my livelihood. This is my nerdy world. You’re trashing. But go ahead, finish that thought. Fair enough deal. Well, look, I think, I think what the prosecutors here have to do is, look, they’ve finally gotten around to trying to start to provide direct evidence of following former President Trump’s involvement. The first week or two of this trial was a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of indirect evidence. What they’re doing now is trying to show that the money that was used to reimburse Cohen came from Donald Trump personally. Does that in and of itself establish criminal activity? No, not necessarily. I think what this is going to boil down to and what we saw the defense trying to suggest today, is that even if the money came from Trump personally, that doesn’t mean he was directing how it was being recorded for accounting purposes, which is something that the DA is going to. You know, Andy, when we step back from this and we look at the clear animosity and tension between the former president and Judge Marchand and all of that, I mean, I I always think regardless of where this case goes, what are the appealable grounds if it ever gets to a conviction or anything like that. And the former president wants to appeal, but how much does that, you know, in Donald Trump’s view, and a lot of his supporters view, the clear bias of this court as they see it will factor in. In terms of the appeal. I think it it’s, you know, it’s another brick in the wall. But the problem is, you know, let’s remember, was it last week or probably within the last two weeks that Harvey Weinstein’s conviction got reversed, which was an amazing thing because Weinstein is comparable to Trump in terms of how unpopular he is, certainly in New York. But The thing is that took like three years to happen and I think the objective here for Democrats is to be able to attach the label convicted felon to Trump in the run up to the 2024 election. It’ll be cold comfort to him, Neil, if he is able to get this thrown out on appeal long after all the damage has been done to him. That may eventually happen. And I think he’s got very strong grounds for appeal. But in the meantime, you know, to the extent they want to brand him a convicted felon, that’s the that’s the danger here. Got it, Gentlemen, Thank you both. If again we get many more updates in the courthouse, but again, the jury has been dismissed. The former president-elect will be coming out fairly soon. We’ll keep you posted on that.