Donald Trump is going to jail. But when?
It’s been clear for quite some time that this was always going to end with Donald Trump behind bars. The timing and circumstances of this have, of course, been trickier to predict. But we’re now at a point where Trump is on criminal trial. And while the lower level felonies in this trial may or may not send him to prison, the more serious felony charges in his other three trials will come with automatic prison sentences if he’s convicted. But even before we get to that, Trump is very close to getting locked up for gag order violations.
How close? The judge in his current trial warned him on Tuesday that any additional gag order violations could result in jail time. How close? The Secret Service recently tipped off the media about its plan for guarding Trump while he’s in jail. How close? Trump has another gag order violation hearing first thing tomorrow morning. But Trump is not getting locked up tomorrow.
It’s important to understand that tomorrow’s hearing is set to cover additional gag order violations that Trump committed before the judge warned Trump about jail time. The judge isn’t going to send Trump to jail for things that he did before he was warned about going to jail.
So the most likely outcome of tomorrow morning’s hearing will be additional fines and a reminder to Trump that he’ll go to jail if he violates his gag order again. This will set off a lot of confused angry ranting on social media (and the usual cries of “He’s getting away with it all!”) but in reality that won’t be the case at all.
The way things actually stand is that if Trump commits any gag order violations after the judge’s warning about jail time, then Trump will be on the hook for jail time. That warning happened on Tuesday morning, and as of the time that I’m writing and publishing this article, Trump still has yet to commit any additional gag order violations (again, tomorrow’s hearing is for violations committed before the jail time warning).
You don’t have to like that this is how the system works. But it’s important that we all understand how the system works. The judge has to handle this in a deliberate, orderly, and incremental manner, so that the appeals court won’t step in and overrule any jail time that he gives Trump. And yes, in spite of so many angry viral tweets, this is how any other defendant would be treated in this situation.
The big question is how long Trump can control himself (or rather how long his babysitters can control him). He’s now gone about thirty hours without committing a gag order violation. But he does have rally speeches scheduled for later today, which is when he’s most likely to blow it. We’ll see.
It’s worth keeping in mind that when Trump has been threatened with jail time for gag order violations in the past, such as at the start of the E. Jean Carroll trial, he’s tended to back down. I’ve seen news outlets declare this week that Trump spent the entire Carroll trial getting away with violations of his gag order, but this flat out never happened (you can go look it up). Trump bit his tongue about Carroll until after the trial was over, at which point the gag order expired.
So the question is whether Trump is going to stick with his previous pattern of backing down in the face of jail time, or whether he’s going to deviate from his own past behavior. Trump’s behavior does seem more unhinged, uncontrolled, and incoherent than ever of late. So it’s entirely possible, maybe even probable, that he will indeed violate his current gag order. If he does, he’ll be locked up. It’s just not going to happen tomorrow.
