Trump Finally Pays a Cash Price for His Threats
Trump Finally Pays a Cash Price for His Threats
And just like that, Donald Trump has been subjected to his first criminal sanction. Was that so hard?
On Tuesday morning, Justice Juan Merchan, the New York judge handling the former president’s hush-money trial, held Trump in contempt and fined him $9,000 for nine separate violations of the gag order he imposed and then expanded this month. The order bars Trump from attacking or threatening witnesses, jurors, prosecutors and others connected to the trial.
Incorrigible man-child that he is, Trump ignored the order, posting on Truth Social, his social media site, precisely the sorts of things he was told not to and claiming he was only exercising his First Amendment rights.
On Tuesday, Merchan ordered Trump to take down the offending posts and warned him that any further violations of the order could result in “an incarceratory sentence.”
As far as I can tell, “incarceratory” was an obscure legal word before this morning. Perhaps Merchan, aware that he was referring to an unprecedented punishment of a former commander in chief, was reaching for something more official sounding than “the pokey.” Regardless, the meaning is perfectly clear: If Trump can’t control himself, he is looking at the real prospect of jail time.
This is, of course, far from the first time the law has faced the dilemma of Donald Trump. Bad-faith allegations of lawfare notwithstanding, the American legal system has been coming for Trump for at least half a century; in 1973 the Nixon Justice Department sued him and his father for racial discrimination in their New York City housing developments. (Naturally, Trump countersued, and the case was settled out of court.)
Yes, $9,000 is couch-cushion change to a man who just enjoyed a multibillion-dollar payday. You could call it hush money, except that it’s unlikely to shut him up.
Still, even small consequences are consequences, especially when accompanied by the threat of more severe ones. Merchan will do everything he can to avoid taking it to that level; he is surely sensitive to the fact that Trump would like nothing more than to be martyred for his cult — not to mention generate a new merchandise stream — by getting himself tossed into Rikers.
Let’s hope we don’t have to confront that scenario. If we do, though, it will be entirely of Trump’s own choosing. Eventually the rule of law must be asserted, because it doesn’t assert itself.