Maggie Haberman Says ‘There’s Going To Be A Collision’ Over Trump Social Media and What Judges Will Put Up With
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman said there’s “going to be a collision” over ex-President Donald Trump’s social media posts and what judges and prosecutors in his various cases will tolerate.
On Monday, Willis reached a deal with Trump attorneys to surrender and post a $200,000.00 bond for his release pending trial — an order warning Trump not to make “direct or indirect threat of any nature” against any of his co-defendants and specifies “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.”
Trump has previously been warned to be careful how he speaks about the charges against him in public, but has continued to make provocative posts.
On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, host Anderson Cooper asked Haberman and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig how those warnings will play out, and Haberman noted that there seems to be a gulf developing between what federal judges and prosecutors will tolerate and what will fly in Georgia:
COOPER: Maggie, I mean, this ruling now from the judge warning about Trump can’t threaten anybody a witness. This is kind of an odd line. I mean, he is running against Mike Pence. If he tweets something negative about Mike Pence, where is the line there?
MAGGIE HABERMAN: We are in unprecedented territory, and we have, I think, you know, grown tired of saying that, but it really happens to be true here. I think we’re going to find out where the line is, and I think that we, as we have seen with former President Trump over and over again, with his social media feed and his commentary, he tends to test exactly where that line is.
We have seen him do it in the federal cases against him. I think we will see him do it here. But you are right, it is a very broad stroke. And so I don’t know quite what this is going to look like. But Trump’s lawyers have said over and over is that his free speech rights are being targeted, and he is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. It’s impossible to divorce all of this from that context.
COOPER: Yes. Elie, I mean, he tweeted recently about Mike Pence, you know, calling him “Little Mike Pence” or “Little Pence” and said he’s gone to the dark side. That’s — you know, political candidates intimidate other political candidates all the time.
Again, where’s the line?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, that’s precisely the difficulty here. I think there’s some tweets that are clearly over the line. Let’s remember what Donald Trump said on Truth Social about Geoff Duncan, for example, right? Clearly attacking him, clearly connected to the case.
But Mike Pence is a little more ambiguous, because as you say, they are engaged in a political campaign against each other right now.
And so prosecutors and judges are going to have to use their judgment, but for every close call, like this example, with Mike Pence, there have been many that are far over the line and really, the question is going to be how tightly do prosecutors and the judge police this because everyone in this case has been threatened somehow.
COOPER: But, look, you know — I mean, the former president, he walks that line constantly. I mean, he intentionally tweet tweeting out, if you come for me, I’ll come for you. Again —
HABERMAN: Also, what you’re going to see, and I’m sorry, Anderson, but this is also where you’re going to see and tell me if you disagree with me on this, but you’re going to see the difference between what the state judges and prosecutors are going to be comfortable with, versus the federal prosecutors, because so far, we have seen, at least in the federal cases, I think, a pretty wide amount of latitude given so far.
They are clearly signaling in Georgia, they don’t want to do that here. But again, you’re talking about multiple cases in multiple jurisdictions, there’s going to be a collision.
Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.
