‘He Can’t Help Himself’: CNN Legal Analyst Confirms Trump Violated Judge’s Orders to Control His Social Media Outbursts

On Friday, former President Donald Trump was warned by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold back on making “inflammatory statements” that may affect the timeline of the trial he faces for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. It only took a weekend for him to ignore her, and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig says that his “outrageous” claims are in direct violation of Chutkan’s orders.

After midnight on Monday, Trump posted a barrage of attacks on Chutkan, calling her “VERY BIASED AND UNFAIR” against other January 6 defendants among other claims. Chutkan warned Trump’s lawyer John Lauro on Friday that the former president’s comments could “be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors,” adding: “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool … the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly.”

But as Honig noted, Trump “can’t help himself.” CNN host Kate Bolduan asked Honig about Trump’s social media posts:

Bolduan: How does this line up with the warning that she offered literally just three days ago to avoid inflammatory language?

Honig: He can’t help himself. And that’s not an excuse, it’s outrageous. It is directly contrary to what the judge just warned him against. Now, sometimes people try to do this because they’re trying to get away from their judge. They want to say, “Well, Judge, you’re biased. And we’ve had these sort of dustups. Therefore we need a new judge.” Judges aren’t going to go for that, Judge Chutkan is not going to go for that. Also, I think it has to be said, these accusations by Donald Trump, completely unfair, completely unwarranted. She has had other January 6 cases. She has handled them properly. She has sentenced them appropriately. She’s not been overturned on appeal on anything. So these are just outrageous comments. It will be interesting to see whether Judge Chutkan does anything about this. And if so, what? I do think from her point of view, her perspective may be, “Better for him to come at me. I’m a judge. I can handle it than to do things that may interfere with witnesses or with the jury.”

Watch the video above via CNN.