Former President Donald Trump was found in violation of a gag order ten times and held in contempt by Judge Juan Merchan, and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell wanted to know if his behavior in court put him in danger of an eleventh violation.
Court was not in session on Wednesday, which gave the networks plenty of time for a post-game on Tuesday’s bombshell testimony from star witness Stormy Daniels, who is at the center of Trump’s hush money trial. During her testimony, Merchan called a sidebar to address Trump “audibly cursing” and telling Trump’s legal team that it was “contemptuous” behavior.
Mitchell asked former New York Assistant Attorney General Adam Pollock about how much trouble this could cause for Trump:
Mitchell: Could former President Trump’s cursing during Daniels’ testimony also be seen as a violation of the gag order?
Pollock: I think it’s not the issue of the gag order. It’s just typical, an issue in the courtroom of maintaining courtroom decorum. And it could be contemptuous. Contemptuous, in general, you can’t be acting like that as a criminal defendant in the middle of the trial.
As the judge said, it’s intimidating to the jury. It can be intimidating to the witness, and the judge would have real grounds to hold him in contempt if he continued to act like this in the middle of the trial while the jury is present.
