Donald Trump has called on the politicians who make the pilgrimage to stand behind him in New York City court where he is on trial, his “surrogates” – as they push the boundaries of personal attacks banned by a gag order.
The coordination and organization between Trump and those supporters have raised questions about whether the comments from the cast of Republicans amounted to a violation of Trump’s silence order. But legal experts say it’s difficult for prosecutors to argue a violation if Trump isn’t the one speaking, and that even if they succeed, it could create a consequence they’re trying to avoid. avoid: sending Trump to jail. .
Trump’s silence order — for which he has already been cited for criminal contempt a dozen times — prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff, as well as those people’s families and the judge presiding over the case. State Judge Juan Merchan, in citing Trump for the violations, warned that further missteps could lead to him being sent to prison, even though prosecutors have maintained they are not seeking his incarceration.
Unable to even out his favored lines of attack, Trump has attacked the silence order itself and Merchan, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom continue to play fair due to his anger under the order.
Allies like Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who made a failed bid for the Republican presidential nominee last year, targeted the prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, when he took the stand last week, accusing him of “systematic” lying and lashing out to Merchan, “who has family members making millions of dollars as a Democratic operative, including through fundraising based on this lawsuit,” a reference to Merchan’s daughter, who was initially not covered by the gag order but was later added.
But Trump’s allies aren’t bound by the order — only he is, said Ken White, a federal criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles.
“For it to be called a violation, he has to direct them to do these things,” White said. “Saying ‘I’m doing this because he can’t do it’ is not enough.”
Trump’s campaign insists the efforts are not coordinated. “All guests come to the court voluntarily to support their friend, President Trump, and are not invited by the campaign,” a spokesperson said.
But even as the sound bites from Trump’s surrogates echo many of his past criticisms, prosecutors have largely held back their fire. Legal experts warn that prosecutors risk suddenly being confronted with a circumstance they say they want to avoid: seeing Trump in jail. On the other hand, they run the risk of falling flat.
White said that even if prosecutors could prove that Trump is responsible — for example, by somehow proving that he edited his surrogates’ comments before releasing them, as a reporter on MSNBC claimed — the outcome could be self-defeating are.
“The prosecutor and the judge want to get it over with,” White said. “They don’t want an afterthought; they don’t want the extreme disruption caused by bringing this up again and possibly even taking the former president into custody.
“That would be a huge derailment of the case,” he added.
Robert Hirschhorn, a lawyer and litigation consultant, said of the rollout: “Whether Team Trump told them ‘these are the points we want you to make,’ they were smart enough not to let Trump tell them, so they isolated him. I think if the state took action to violate the gag order, they would lose.
“The only option left for the judge is to punish Trump with some form of detention, even if it takes an hour or two. And I just don’t think the judge is going to do it,” Hirschhorn said.
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum joined Ramaswamy in striking against Merchan’s daughter. When asked, his supporters said they joined Trump in court of their own accord, and not at his direction. But they do not arrive on their own, they queue and enter through the public entrance. Several people were seen or acknowledged traveling with Trump to the courthouse and remain part of the Secret Service security bubble that remains around him.
Another group of allies joined Trump in court on Monday. Among them was law professor Alan Dershowitz, who was seen speaking heatedly during a break in the courtroom with Norm Eisen, a CNN contributor and legal analyst and ethics adviser to Obama in the White House who was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s presidential election. first impeachment. Developer and longtime Trump friend Steve Witkoff, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Trump administration official Kash Patel also sat right behind Trump in the courtroom on Monday.
Those traveling with him or sitting in chairs also coordinated media comments outside the courthouse — where they often uttered the words that Trump himself is barred from saying.
Surrogates’ rotating duties have drawn attention in the courtroom.
During a meeting between Merchan and attorneys — known as a sidebar, held where the jury can’t hear but transcribed for the record — the prosecutor asked that Trump’s surrogates and their security details not be allowed to enter or leave the courtroom during questioning . A lawyer for Trump, Todd Blanche, said he had no control over them.
“Your Honor, I have less than no control over what happens to anything or anyone standing behind me when I encounter a witness,” Blanche said. “I don’t have any control over them – I mean, they’re members of the public.”
“Are you expecting anyone today?” Merchan asked.
“Your Honor, I have no idea,” Blanche replied. “I don’t expect anyone else. But maybe I’m wrong.”
‘They come from everywhere’
The parade of surrogates has taken on the sheen of a campaign in other ways. In a new online video ad calling for campaign donations, Ramaswamy appears at the courthouse alongside Florida representatives Byron Donalds and Cory Mills and members of Trump’s family, including son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara Trump, co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. You can hear Trump in the background speaking to the media cameras.
“We are here in court with President Trump next to him, but we need you too,” says Donalds.
While some of Trump’s allies arrived in his motorcade, others have entered with the crowd and been spotted in the overflow room, such as Jeffery Clark, a former Justice Department official who was indicted alongside Trump in a separate criminal trial in Georgia, where they are accused of crimes related to the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor and member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina, entered the courtroom Monday along with reporters and members of the public.
Outside the courtroom, Trump has stepped up his allies’ defense, praising them — and even pointing to the efforts of others in Washington.
“I have a lot of surrogates, and they speak very nicely,” Trump said, adding that “they come from everywhere.”
“And they think this is the biggest scam they’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re all confused.”
White said Trump is an unusual litigant because he seems to focus almost entirely on what happens outside the courtroom. In court, he is seen reading and annotating articles and polls.
“His strategies are often about public narrative and politics, fundraising and his base, not about what would best serve him in court and traditional legal strategy,” White said.
A day after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded files from a lead attorney in the case he accused of being fixated on Trump’s prosecution for years, Trump raised the allegations himself.
Trump said in the hallway outside Merchan’s courtroom: “This all comes from the White House and the Department of Justice. These are all. In fact, a lead person from the DOJ is leading the process.”
Trump all but dares the prosecutor to go after him by letting his surrogates up front skirt the edge of the silence order by using a “workaround” to broadcast his message while adhering to the letter of the rule, Hirschhorn said .
“It’s crystal clear what he does. He’s trying to turn it into a political process,” Hirschhorn said of Trump, who asks for a listening ear, perhaps even in the room.
“There may be at least one person on the jury who identifies as a Republican, and if there is, that’s a game for that juror,” he said.
White said, “You’d have to be crazy to antagonize the judge in your criminal case. Most people wouldn’t do it. But he has always been focused on his public image, his ego and the political narrative, to the detriment of his courtroom strategy.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
