donald trump has called the politicians who make the pilgrimage to support him in the New York City courtroom where he is on trial his “surrogates” – as they push the lines of personal attacks he was prevented from making because of a order of silence.
The coordination and organization between Trump and these supporters has raised questions about whether the Republican cast’s remarks constitute a violation of Trump’s gag order. But legal experts say it is difficult for prosecutors to argue that a violation occurred when Trump is not the one speaking, and that even if they are successful, it could trigger a consequence they are trying to avoid: sending Trump to prison. .
Trump’s gag order — which he has already been found in criminal contempt for violating 10 times — prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff, as well as the families of those people and the judge presiding over the case. State Judge Juan Merchan, in citing Trump for the violations, warned that further errors could result in his arrest, even as prosecutors insisted they were not asking for him to be jailed.
Unable to level his favored lines of attack, Trump attacked the gag order itself and Merchan, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom continue to be sitting ducks for his ire under the order.
Allies like Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who made a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination last year, took aim at the prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, when he took the stand last week, accusing him of “systematically” lying and attacking Merchan, “who has family members earning millions of dollars as a Democratic operative, including through fundraising using this trial as a basis,” a reference to Merchan’s daughter, who was not initially covered by the gag order but was later added.
But Trump’s allies are not subject to the order — only he is, said Ken White, a federal criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles.
“For it to be a violation, he has to direct them to do these things,” White said. “Saying ‘I’m doing this because he can’t’ isn’t enough.”
The Trump campaign insists the effort is not coordinated. “All guests volunteer to attend court to support their friend President Trump and are not invited by the campaign,” a spokesperson said.
Yet even as Trump surrogates’ catchphrases echo many of their past criticisms, prosecutors have largely held their fire. Legal experts warn that prosecutors risk suddenly facing a circumstance they said they wanted to avoid — seeing Trump arrested. On the other hand, they run the risk of falling.
White said that even if prosecutors could show that Trump is responsible, for example by somehow proving that he edited his surrogates’ comments before they turned them over, as one reporter claimed on MSNBC, the result could be self-defeating.
“The prosecutor and the judge want to get it done,” White said. “They don’t want a sideshow; they don’t want the extreme disruption of raising this issue 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 trial consultant, said of the release: “If the Trump team 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 acted in violation of the gag order, they would lose.
“The judge’s only real option is to sanction Trump with some kind of incarceration, even if it’s for an hour or two. And I just don’t think the judge is going to do that,” Hirschhorn said.
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum joined Ramaswamy in attacking Merchan’s daughter. When questioned, his supporters said they joined Trump in court of their own volition, not on his orders. But they are not arriving alone, standing in line and entering through the public entrance — several were seen or recognized traveling with Trump to the courthouse and remaining part of the security “bubble” the Secret Service maintains around him.
Another group of allies joined Trump in court on Monday. Among them was law professor Alan Dershowitz, who could be heard during a break speaking animatedly in court about the case with his former student and research advisor Norm Eisen, a CNN contributor and legal analyst and Obama’s ethics adviser at White House, who was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment. Developer and longtime Trump friend Steve Witkoff, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Trump administration official Kash Patel were also seated directly behind Trump in the courtroom on Monday. fair.
Dershowitz said he saw Eisen in the gallery behind him. “I went over there and said, ‘Hey, Norm, how are you? Let’s talk a little,’ and we had a very pleasant conversation,” Dershowitz told NBC News. “I asked him about his family and we talked a little about the case.”
Those who traveled with him or sat in seats also coordinated media comments outside the court building — where they often uttered the words that Trump himself is prohibited from saying.
The rotating task of the substitutes drew attention in court.
During a meeting between Merchan and lawyers — known as a sidebar, held where the jury cannot hear but transcribed for the record — the prosecution asked that Trump’s surrogates and their security details not be allowed to enter or leave the courtroom during questioning. A Trump defense attorney, Todd Blanche, said he had no control over them.
“Your Honor, I have absolutely no control over what is happening to anything or anyone behind me when I am contradicting a witness,” Blanche said. “I don’t have any control over — I mean, they’re members of the public.”
“Are you expecting anyone else today?” Merchan asked.
“Your Honor, I have no idea,” Blanche replied. “I’m not waiting for anyone else. But I could be wrong.”
‘They come from everywhere’
The parade of replacements took on the luster of a campaign in other ways. In a new online video advertisement asking for campaign donations, Ramaswamy appears in court alongside Florida Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills and members of Trump’s family, including son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Trump can be heard in the background speaking to media cameras.
“We are here in court with President Trump by your side, but we need you to support him too,” says Donalds.
While some of Trump’s allies arrived in his motorcade, others entered with the audience and were seen in the packed 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 effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor and member of the South Carolina House, entered the courtroom alongside reporters and members of the public on Monday .
Outside the courtroom, Trump expanded on his allies’ defenses, praising them — and even referencing the efforts of others in Washington.
“I have a lot of surrogates and they speak very well,” Trump said, adding that “they come from all over.”
“And they think this is the biggest scam they’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re all up in arms.”
White said Trump is an unusual litigator because he appears to be focused almost entirely on what is happening outside the courtroom. Inside the courtroom, he was seen reading and taking notes on articles and research.
“His strategies tend to be about the public narrative, politics, fundraising and his base rather than what would be best for him in court and traditional legal strategy,” White said.
A day after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded records from a lead attorney on the case, whom he accused of having spent years fixated on prosecuting TrumpTrump himself raised the charges.
Speaking in the hallway outside Merchan’s courtroom, Trump said: “This is all coming from the White House and the Department of Justice. That’s all them. In fact, a top person at the DOJ is running the trial.”
Trump is practically daring the district attorney’s office to go after him, putting his deputies in front, skirting the gag order’s threshold, using a “workaround” to get his message across while he follows the letter of the rule, Hirschhorn said.
“It is absolutely clear what he is doing. He’s trying to turn this into a political trial,” Hirschhorn said of Trump, who is looking for a sympathetic ear, perhaps even within the room.
“It could be that there is at least one person on that jury who identifies as Republican, and if so, it’s a straight play for that juror,” he said.
White said: “You would have to be crazy to antagonize the judge in your criminal case. Most people wouldn’t do that. But he has always focused on his public image, his ego and the political narrative to the detriment of his courtroom strategy.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
