Former President Donald Trump is trying a last-ditch attempt to throw his criminal hush money trial in Manhattan into chaos, legal expert Lisa Rubin argued on MSNBC Thursday evening.
Specifically, she said, he is trying to put Judge Juan Merchan in a position where he has to put him in jail.
"Donald Trump appeared to talk about one of the prosecutors in the trial today," said anchor Alicia Menendez, playing a clip of Trump telling reporters outside the courthouse, "A lead person from the DOJ is running the trial, so Biden's office is running this trial."
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"Not true, to fact check to that," Menendez added. "What is he doing there?"
"What he is really doing is daring Judge Merchan to put him in jail," said Rubin. "Because the last time Donald Trump was penalized for violating the gag order, Judge Merchan made it clear to Donald Trump, you do this one more time and I have other remedies at my disposal. The statute only provides me with two. One is a fine up to $1,000 and the other is jail. I don't want to execute the jail option. It would be disruptive to the administration of justice, but I will if I have to."
Trump seems to want him to do it "just to throw a bomb into the proceeding as it reaches its inevitable conclusion," Rubin added. "We did not hear from the D.A. today. We have not heard the full transcript yet, so it is possible they mentioned it on the sidebar, but so far in open court the district attorney's office has not said this counts as a violation. That doesn't mean they won't and on Monday or beyond we might hear from the D.A.'s office that while they don't want this to interfere with the rest of the trial, it's possible they will say to the judge as it reaches its conclusion, hey, this happened while the jury was out and now it is time to take action."
Watch the video below or at the link.
Lisa Rubin says Trump tried to throw a "bomb" into his own trial youtu.be
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