Federal, state and local officials have met to plan their operations during Donald Trump’s first potential incarceration, the New York Times reported yesterday .
Trump now faces ten charges of violating the limited gag order Judge Juan Marchan imposed that bars him from threatening people linked to the former president’s campaign fraud trial.
Each one of those allegations carries a potential $1,000 fine or 30 day jail sentence. Trump provoked the order via a series of online and televised threats directed at Marchan’s family and others.
Trump also has targeted New York court staff in his previous trials.
Marchan tailored the limited order to cover other categories of individuals Trump previously has menaced.
They include witnesses, former Trump employees, jurors, and their families.
Marchan called out the former president to his face for misbehavior in the courtroom when the 77-year-old defendant mumbled and gestured threateningly at a juror.
Yesterday morning, Marchan held a hearing on the Manhattan District Attorney Office request that the court impose fines or jail time in accord with the limited gag order.
Marchan told prosecutors and defense attorneys he would issue a ruling later. Any resulting custodial order would be the first for a former US president.
State prosecutors explained in their request that Trump’s threats against court employees and their families had inspired death threats from Trump’s extremist MAGA supporters.
Prosecutor Chris Conroy told Marchan that Trump “seems to be angling” for a jail stint by provoking the court with continued defiance of the contempt order. The prosecution hasn't yet asked Marchan to jail Trump for his contempt misbehavior, Conroy said.
Trump issues threats against his perceived foes via online and televised media, as well as in person during raucous, sometimes violent campaign rallies.
The former president’s oblique but impassioned inflammatory remarks at the infamous Jan. 6 rally on Washington’s Ellipse included a call to “fight like Hell.”
That rhetoric, preceded by an online pledge that the Jan. 6 events “Will be wild!,” triggered his incensed MAGA crowd to attack the US Capitol.
Trump’s thinly-veiled commands to his Jan. 6 audience preceded their subsequent deadly violence and multi-million-dollar destructive rampage at the Capitol.
The ensuing riot claimed the lives of five people within 36 hours. Many people suffered injuries, including 174 police officers. Four officers who defended Congress against the mob died by suicide within seven months.
Hundreds of the domestic violent extremists Trump groomed for Jan. 6 riot now are serving federal prison sentences, following their guilty pleas or trial convictions. Trump himself faces federal criminal charges pursuant to the failed Jan. 6 insurrection.
Justice Department prosecutors charged more than 1,200 people with crimes related to the failed insurrection. Those defendants included both senior MAGA riot planners, known as “suits,” and the armed, low-level “boots” in the mob.
Trump himself faces dozens of state and federal criminal charges in Georgia, Florida, and Washington for his role in the Jan. 6 incident.
The gag order violations alleged in Manhattan this week, however, could lead to the first of many custodial sentences Trump faces.
Former prosecutors and law professors experienced in New York State criminal courts agreed that the penalties Marchan levies resulting from his contempt order will increase in severity if and when Trump’s threats continue.
Secret Service guards will protect Trump throughout his jail and prison terms, if any.
Trump’s recent contempt order violations likely will lead to fines at first.
He will serve any subsequent incarceration in a New York jail or courthouse holding cell.
Defendants, including Trump, go to prison only when courts issue sentences after trials or guilty pleas, under normal circumstances.
Trump’s Secret Service detail will stay with him if he goes to the Rikers Island jail, or if he serves time in a Manhattan courthouse holding cell.
Secret Service and New York court officials’ discussions about Trump’s possible incarceration covered matters such as his safety while in custody, The New York Times reported.
The meetings focused only on how to move and protect Trump if Marchan were to commit him briefly in a courthouse holding cell, the newspaper reported.
The Times article cited interviews with a dozen officials.
“Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the New York City jails agency, said only that “the department would find appropriate housing” for the former president,” according to the article.
“Obviously, it’s uncharted territory,” said Martin F. Horn, who has worked at the highest levels of New York’s and Pennsylvania’s state prison agencies. Horn was commissioner of New York City’s correction and probation departments.
He told the Times. “Certainly no state prison system has had to deal with this before, and no federal prison has had to either.”