Should former President Donald Trump be jailed for what appears to be a near-pathological inability to abide by a gag order handed down by the New York State Supreme Court judge in a criminal hush-money trial, the logistics of such an undertaking will present a first-of-its-kind quandary for authorities via Daily Beast.
It has been noted that on Monday, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $1,000 for violating the gag order again and cautioned the former president that he was playing with fire.
“I’ll find you in criminal contempt for the tenth time,” Merchan warned from the bench. “It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore, going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction.”
It is noted that contempt of court carries a $1,000 per violation and/or up to 30 days in jail.
Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who is now serving a five-month bid for perjuring himself in the former president’s civil fraud trial, is doing his time at Rikers Island’s West Facility, as per the jail records.
Experts said that the chances of Trump being inside of a cell remain extremely narrow and the lockup would be one possible destination for the twice-impeached ex-commander-in-chief, a corrections insider noted to The Daily Beast.
It has come to light that the West Facility, one of seven active facilities on the 413-acre island in the East River, is home to the New York City Department of Correction’s Communicable Disease Unit (CDU) but has separate cells for high-profile inmates and those in protective custody.
Other notable names of the West Facility have included ex-International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn (rape, later acquitted); former NFL star Plaxico Burress (weapons possession, later sentenced to two years); and disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein (rape, presently serving a multiyear sentence on convictions in two states—one of which was recently overturned on appeal.)
Some have theorized about potentially housing Trump in an unused jail on Rikers, such as the shuttered Anna M. Kross Center. It is clear that incarcerating Trump would be an incredibly dicey proposition. For starters, as Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told The Daily Beast, Trump is entitled to round-the-clock protection even if he’s in jail. And having a coterie of armed bodyguards inside a city jail, according to former New York City Department of Correction (DOC) Commissioner Martin Horn, runs completely counter to the no-firearms policy that is standard in New York and across the nation.
It seems that if he were to be treated like any other detainee, Trump’s stay on Rikers would begin with the standard intake process, which includes a strip search and a medical screening.
Those who are charged with misdemeanors are given a “less invasive” search, according to The City. Trump would likely avoid this, of course.
Broadly speaking, Horn, the former DOC commissioner, now a professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, would be highly surprised if Trump spent any time at all on Rikers Island over the gag order.
