Now that Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization itself are to be indicted in New York City, one can expect the usual torrent of abuse from the Doge of Mar-a-Lago. What an opportunity for a judicial gag order, writes former Manhattan D.A.’s office prosecutor Robert C. Gottlieb (CNN opinion):
One must have been sleeping through the Trump presidency not to expect that a wounded Trump will do and say anything to prejudice the fair administration of justice. Now, the district attorney should ask the judge at the arraignment to impose a strict gag order restraining Trump, the Trump family, prosecutors, defense attorneys and all witnesses from making any public statements intended to prevent a fair trial, free of prejudice. A violation of a gag order is the crime of contempt of a court order with a potential one year in jail.
I have personally been involved in a number of high-profile cases where gag orders were imposed, and they are not unusual in high publicity criminal cases. Harvey Weinstein, Michael Jackson, Paul Manafort are just a few of the recent cases in which judges restricted attorneys, defendants and witnesses from speaking publicly.
From the US Supreme Court to state and federal district courts, judges have affirmed their inherent power to control their courtroom by forbidding participants from making public statements whenever they have a “reasonable likelihood of tending to prevent a fair trial, free of prejudice and properly administered.” The New York Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys codifies restrictions on lawyers’ out of court statements by prohibiting an attorney from making any statement “ordinarily likely to prejudice materially” a criminal matter — namely, influencing jurors to affect the outcome of a trial. Without a court-ordered gag order, Trump will likely set out to demonize witnesses, cooperators, prosecutors and the judge in his effort to delegitimize the entire criminal justice system, a bedrock American institution that reflects this nation’s principle of impartial justice that is based on evidence and truth.
In fact, Trump is already at it:
Roger Stone’s example comes to mind. Judge Amy Berman Jackson banned Stone from major social media platforms for repeatedly violating the court’s gag order in his case, but she declined to charge the Trump confidant with contempt. Those platforms have already booted Trump.
Stay tuned later today.