Maggie Haberman Tells CNN Trump ‘Would Be In Jail’ For Attacks on Courts If He Was Any Other Defendant
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman said ex-President Donald Trump would be in jail for his attacks on judges and prosecutors if he were any other defendant.
Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan warned ex-President Donald Trump at a hearing Friday he must not make statements that could intimidate witnesses or taint the jury pool even “if that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say in a political speech.”
But Trump has continued to make attacks on social media that many have said violate the terms of his release.
On Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, co-anchor Poppy Harlow asked Haberman about Trump pushing those limits “in a way that could really hurt him,” and Haberman cited legal experts who have told her Trump’s behavior is jail-worthy:
POPPY HARLOW: Trump taunts– tests limits of release. And you write “Mr. Trump is now probing the limits of what the criminal justice system will tolerate and the lines that Judge Tanya Chutkan sought to lay out about what he can and cannot say.”.
He is really pushing here in a way that could really hurt him in terms of how this trial is conducted, when this trial is conducted.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: So Judge Chutkan, and he has been attacking prosecutors and other judges in these various cases. But Judge Chutkan, who oversees the January 6 case against him at the federal level, warned at a hearing on Friday with the two parties that there was clearly going to be a limit to Trump’s free speech.
Now, his lawyers and his advisers argue he’s the front-runner for the political for the Republican nomination. He’s a political candidate. He should have a fair amount of leeway because of that. And she was suggesting there are going to be limits despite that, because the laws of the court have to come first. He went within a short time of that hearing and began posting on social, his social media website, other people’s posts, I guess you’d call them truths, about Judge Chutkan, you know, adding some of his own commentary. Generally, it was other people’s one included a very large picture of her. And so he is very clearly testing the terms of his release, both in that case and I would say with these attacks on prosecutors and others, Poppy. You know, some lawyers say, and we talk about this in the piece, other defendants, if they were doing similar things, would be in jail. Now, it’s very complicated to think of something like that happening to somebody with a Secret Service detail. But there is the question of will the judge or the prosecutors seek some kind of recourse as he continues to talk?
POPPY HARLOW: Well, she did threaten to move it up. The more he talks about, not the personal threats, but about discovery.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Right. Which it right. It’s, what she suggested was that she may be forced to preserve the sanctity of the jury pool and witnesses. She may be forced to move the trial date up sooner if this continues. And so we’ll see if the government tries to suggest that he has already breached that.
Watch above via CNN This Morning.
