Did Donald Trump just violate his gag order again?
Ever since Judge Merchan formally warned Donald Trump on Tuesday morning that he was facing potential jail time if he violated his gag order again, Trump has indeed behaved. He hasn’t so much as mentioned any of the witnesses in the trial. Even when he went cartoonishly off the rails during his rally speech on Wednesday, he was still careful to abide by the gag order. He even (incorrectly) stated that he can’t testify in this trial because of the gag order. Trump is clearly afraid of being locked up.
Trump’s attorneys even presented the judge with a stack of Truth Social posts that Trump wanted to make, asking the judge to pre-approve them; the judge said no. But now Trump has made a Truth Social video post which includes footage of Andrew Giuliani attacking the judge’s daughter. Oops.
Here’s where things are about to get interesting. The post is, on its face, a violation of the gag order. The judge has already made clear to Trump that he’s not allowed to use other people’s words as a way of getting around the gag order.
But Trump, who famously has no technological skills at all, probably didn’t embed this video onto Truth Social himself. It’s more likely that his social media manager, Dan Scavino, is the one who uploaded this video. So the question becomes whether Scavino showed the video to Trump and got approval first, whether or not Trump watched the entire video, and so on.
In other words, this could get into the territory that I’ve spent this entire trial waiting for: the judge may end up digging into how Trump’s Truth Social posts actually get made. If Trump claims that he didn’t sign off on this video, the judge could end up wanting to talk to Scavino about how it got posted. And if this does happen, would Scavino have to admit (under oath) whether he’s been ghostwriting posts for Trump, as so many people have long suspected?
Judge Merchan may indeed end up deciding not to throw Trump in jail based on this Truth Social video. After all, the offending words are coming from someone else’s mouth, Trump didn’t upload the video personally, and so on, so is this really the post that the judge wants to use as the basis for locking him up? After all, it’s just a short matter of time before Trump commits the kind of direct gag order violation that’ll provide a much easier legal basis for throwing him in a cell. But if nothing else, this video post might get us some answers about just how many or few of Trump’s Truth Social posts are even written by Trump these days.
