#GagOrders#TrumpTrials I was accused of being argumentative today because I corrected a point of law in someone’s post. There’s very few conversations I get involved with because I get it that sometimes people are just expressing their intense emotions. EX: FASCISM!! But whenever I see a point of law being discussed that is wrong or misleading, I’m going to jump in for a couple of reasons. The offended person can block me, its OK. Short thread 1/5
#GagOrders#TrumpTrials One- so few Americans know or understand our legal system I think its important to help with their civic education. Two, we have readers who are not Americans and they may be baffled by how our system works. And finally, to help reduce the possibility of misinformation. Gag orders have come up quite a bit in the Trump cases so I’m going to say something about that. 2/5
#GagOrders#TrumpTrials
Gag orders although not routinely put in place are not that rare, particularly in high profile cases. Both lawyers and defendants can have their speech restricted. You may recall when the judge in the RICO case when ruling against the defendants request to have Willis removed said he would at some point consider a motion for a gag against Willis because of the speech she made at the church on MLK Jr. day. So, even lawyers have speech restricted. 3/5
#GagOrders#TrumpTrials In some cases like Trump’s, the defendant’s speech is restricted and violations can lead to fines and possibly a short imprisonment as Merchan pointed out. Sometimes despite warning defendants and/or their lawyers will violate the gag order. This will lead to another Order to Show Cause hearing. You’ll see that on Thursday when Merchan returns to the DA’s motion from last week. Repeated violations can lead to incarceration. 4/5
#GagOrders#TrumpTrials Repeated violations can help demonstrate that the defendant intends to violate the speech restraints. The violations do not in any way relieve the prosecutor of his burden to prove all of the elements of the crimes in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt. Nor, are they proof of the guilt or innocence of the defendant in the underlying case. Its not Trump’s case obviously, but you can be guilty of contempt and also not guilty of the crimes you were charged with. 5/5
@fulanigirl all of this. This is a separate and not unusual thing and Thursday should be 'interesting'. He may not incarcerate Trump now or post-trial because his really clear really well-worded decision came after the second set of offenses. Maybe.
I can hear Trump's lawyers argument now ... "but judge, he didn't know you were SERIOUS then" ... which get them set on fire about their duty to instruct client on all the possible outcomes.
We'll see.
But spot on with the thread.
@Eddiethebulldog I agree that he may not incarcerate on Thursday because he just gave the warning on Tuesday, and the show cause hearing is about things that happened before the warning. So it should be interesting. I would guess any violations coming after this week could push Merchan closer to "lock him up." Thank you for reading the thread.
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