New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) said Tuesday that the city’s infamous Rikers Island jail will be “ready” for former President Trump if he is sentenced to prison for violating a gag order in his criminal trial for hiding money.
Adams said the city’s Department of Corrections “is prepared for whatever happens at Rikers Island,” comparing the potential of detaining a high-profile person like Trump to the experience of film producer and sex offender Harvey Weinstein.
“We have to adjust, you know – in this business, especially in regards to law enforcement, we have to adjust to everything that comes our way,” he said. said at a press conference Tuesday. “But we don’t want to deal with a hypothesis. They are professionals, they will be ready.”
Trump has been found violating a gag order on his speech 10 times in two hearings in the ongoing trial, with Judge Juan Merchan threatening Trump with prison time if he continues to discuss details or make derogatory comments about witnesses and other judicial figures in public comments.
The former president has already been fined US$10,000 for violations in the case, where he is accused of falsifying commercial documents to cover up an alleged case that occurred a decade earlier, in the weeks before the 2016 elections.
The judge told Trump on Monday that “the last thing I want to do is put you in prison,” but “at the end of the day, I have a job to do.”
“Their continued violations constitute a direct attack on the rule of law,” Merchan said.
Prosecutors have said they do not intend to put Trump behind bars for the violations.
Trump has sharply criticized Merchan’s gag order and those he received from judges in his other cases, saying they violate his First Amendment rights to respond to political attacks, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee becomes the first former president US to face criminal trial.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
