Donald Trump Jr. goes off the deep end over gag order
Even after Donald Trump was forced to delete his social media post attacking Judge Arthur Engoron’s clerk, he appeared to mistakenly leave up a syndicated version of the post on his official website. Once this was discovered, the judge hit Trump with a fine today and informed him that he’s on track for prison.
This was the correct move, given that it was apparently unintentional on Trump’s part. You don’t throw someone in prison for contempt because they mistakenly failed to delete all iterations of a post. But Trump is now clearly in line for the slammer if it happens again, because he just used up his “oopsie” so to speak. Then there’s Donald Trump Junior.
After Judge Engoron’s ruling came down today, Donald Trump Jr. shared a social media post claiming that the judge was taking his instructions from “Democrat PAC Meidas Touch.” Uh, that’s not an accurate description of Meidas Touch, or how anything works in general. But it may still be newsworthy.
It’s important to keep in mind that Donald Trump Jr. is also a defendant in this civil trial. So when Judge Engoron issued the gag order to all parties involved, this included Junior. Now Junior is attacking the judge. The gag order was clearly aimed at protecting the judge’s clerk and other court officers from attack. But the judge himself is also an officer of the court.
We’ll see how the judge chooses to interpret his own gag order. The aforementioned Meidas Touch thinks that this means Junior has violated the gag order. If this is the case, then Junior won’t get off with a slap on the wrist, because – unlike his father – his violation would be seen as egregious and intentional.
