Jail Donald Trump
Justice Juan Merchan has no choice now, and shame on Democrats, particularly the powerful ones representing New York, for not standing up for the rule of law.
I woke up this morning thinking to myself, how do you get a New York state criminal court judge to watch a segment of MSNBC. More specifically, I thought, How do you get the judge not to pretend the segment escaped his noitce?
Here’s the segment in question. It’s relevance will be obvious to many of you, but I’ll elaborate below.
The panel is talking about the Republicans in Congress and in the MAGA diaspora who’ve made the journey to New York to “support” Donald Trump through his criminal trial, but really to stand outside the court and say things that Trump is barred by gag order from saying himself.
On Tuesday, a whole phalanx of dignity-deprived loyalists assembled to pick up where Trump left off a few weeks ago by singling out Justice Juan Merchan’s daughter—something the gag order expressly prohibits Trump from doing himself.
The unseemly parade of Republicans acting as passthroughs for Trump’s contempt has naturally fueled speculation that Trump himself might be scripting their diatribes, which would constitute a gag-order violation in and of itself. That order prohibits Trump from “making or directing others to make” comments about witnesses, jurors, most court officers, and their families, including Merchan’s daughter, Loren.
But the setup gave Trump plausible deniability—Speaker Mike Johnson and Vivek Ramaswamy and all the others aren’t gagged in this case, after all, and there was no hard evidence that they were taking instruction directly from Trump. Maybe they just intuited all the things he wanted them to say?
Not so says journalist Andrew Rice. He witnessed Trump annotate their talking points. Merchan may not want to jail Trump, but what choice has Trump left him?
MASTER OF PUPPETS
Trump can’t even really hide behind the distinction between “directing” and “suggesting.” As if to taunt Merchan, Trump has already acknowledged that they speak on his behalf. He boasted Tuesday that he has "a lot of surrogates and they are speaking very beautifully."
The literal and contextual meaning of the word “surrogates” largely moots the distinction. Surrogates don’t show up where they’re not wanted and say things that haven’t been scripted for them to some extent.
One of them, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), even confessed to the purpose of these pilgrimages.
“Hopefully we have more and more senators and congressmen go up everyday to represent him, and be able to go out and overcome this gag order,” Tuberville admitted. “That’s one of the reasons we went! Is to be able to speak our piece for President Trump!”
(Both clips via
.)It may be easier for Merchan to pretend he missed something that aired on Newsmax rather than MSNBC, but that’s a tougher sell if more people are out there connecting the dots for him. The public record is clear enough. But there’s also hard evidence, assuming Trump’s Republicans haven’t already destroyed it. Merchan could compel its production, if he wanted to send a firmer message that the rule of law has no loopholes, not even if you count senators and congressmen as “friends.”
Ducking this confrontation would expose Merchan as a paper tiger and reveal the rule of law to have basically no defenders within the halls of power.
MISSING IN WACKTION
Liberals have mocked the Republicans at Trump’s beck and call, and understandably so. The spectacle is truly pathetic. But as is so often the case, Republicans evince an awareness that power-seeking has a theatrical element to it, while their opponents do not.
We see Ramaswamy and Johnson and JD Vance as the supplicants they are, but millions of others just see one-sided outrage over how Trump is being treated.
That’s not to say Democrats should deputize their own surrogates to engage in counter-intimidation of witnesses or jurors or court officers or their families. But they should have a presence at the courthouse to condemn the Trump surrogates and defend the independence of the justice system to the assembled press.
These Republicans have traveled to a state they don’t represent or live in to, “attack the U.S. system of justice… foundational to the U.S. government and a cornerstone of democracy,” as the Associated Press put it. The courthouse is in New York City, which is represented almost exclusively by Democrats, including the Senate Majority Leader and House Minority Leader. Many of the people under attack are their constituents, in addition to being sworn public servants. It would cost Democratic leaders very little to defend their honor and shame Republicans for making them collateral damage in an oath-breaking effort to help Trump pervert justice or even nullify his jury. And it would be the right thing to do.
Knowing powerful figures had taken an interest in defending the integrity of the proceedings would also make it easier for Merchan to do the right thing. As it stands, he can’t be blamed for assuming that if he takes the momentous step of jailing Trump, Republicans will seek retribution, perhaps even violent retribution, and nobody with comparable power have his back.
The trial resumes on Thursday.