The choose set bail at $200,000 for defendant Trump, which appears a relatively foolish quantity. In spite of everything, if he’s a billionaire as he claims, then strolling (or operating) away from $200 grand actually received’t make a lot of a distinction in his life. If bail is warranted in any respect, then make it matter, as in $2 billion. However then, if the choose doesn’t see any potential for Trump fleeing the nation and establishing a authorities in absentia if issues take a flip for the more severe, then why impose bail in any respect? Launch him on his personal recognizance except there’s a motive to set bail. Bail isn’t punishment, regardless of how a lot you need to see him punished sooner relatively than later, and time and again.
However the kicker right here isn’t the cash, which presumably Trump can afford by counting on the naivete of his supporters donations, however the circumstances of bail.
Below his bond settlement in Georgia, Mr. Trump can not talk with any co-defendants within the case besides by means of his lawyers. He was additionally directed to “make no direct or oblique menace of any nature in opposition to the neighborhood,” together with “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by one other particular person.”
The phrases have been extra in depth than these set for different defendants within the case thus far, which didn’t particularly point out social media. Up to now, Mr. Trump has made inflammatory and typically false private assaults on Fani T. Willis, the district lawyer of Fulton County, who’s main the case.
The path to not talk with co-defendants besides by means of lawyers is shocking. Within the unusual scheme of prosecution of a number of defendants, the defendants commonly speak, focus on their defense, their choices and their joint technique. It’s very a lot part of the character of a bunch charged with conspiracy to have interaction in mutual dialogue for the advantage of their protection. It’s not, per se, improper, except communication is getting used to suborn perjury, to intimidate co-defendants to not cooperate, to threaten or coerce them to do one thing untoward.
However making “no direct or indict menace” in opposition to any of the co-defendants, the witnesses, the prosecutors and the choose is one other matter. There may be the query of what constitutes a menace, which might embrace implicitly telling his sycophants to take motion in opposition to any of the opposite gamers on this drama. Can Trump play his common recreation of attacking his enemies and get away with it?
Mr. Trump’s assaults continued on Monday forward of his bond being set. In a put up on Fact Social, he known as Ms. Willis “crooked, incompetent, & extremely partisan” and wrote that she “has allowed Homicide and different violent crime to MASSIVELY ESCALATE.” In truth, homicides have fallen sharply in Atlanta in the primary half of the yr.
Being crucial, even falsely crucial, of these Trump both believes or needs his followers to imagine are his enemies is protected First Modification speech. Obstructing justice, alternatively, isn’t. He can not intimidate witnesses or suborn perjury. He can not poison the jury pool. He can not search to intimidate the prosecution or the choose. Simply because it emanates from his mouth (or fingers) doesn’t imply he’s allowed to take action.
However that occurs if he does?
If Trump persists in his incoherent rantings in opposition to his “enemies,” the choose is left with 4 choices. The primary is to do nothing, which can neither deter Trump from partaking in prohibited conduct nor replicate effectively on the choose. The second is to talk sternly to Trump, with an “or else” on the again within the hope that that point, if not this time, he’ll do as directed. The third is to extend his bail quantity as a tangible reflection of the seriousness of the bail circumstances.
And the fourth is to remand Trump to the custody of the Fulton County sheriff.
The primary three choices are tepid and pointless, as there’s completely nothing in Trump’s relatively flagrant historical past to counsel that complying with a court’s admonitions means something to him. Nobody has ever prompt that Trump has respect for something a choose has to say except it occurs to profit him.
However can he be remanded, jailed, for disobeying the court’s prohibitions? Would any choose inform the court officers to “take cost” of the defendant? How would that even work together with his Secret Service element? And what would grow to be of a choose who jailed a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the US?
Then once more, if the choose doesn’t remand Trump for giving the court a giant finger and continuing together with his common child-like rants and assaults, it makes clear that Trump is, certainly, above the legislation and can’t be handled just like the prison defendant he’s. It’s a conundrum.
*Tuesday Speak guidelines apply, inside motive.
