Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday filed a motion that urged U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to put guardrails in place to protect the possible jurors in Donald Trump’s election-subversion case.
Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner suggested Smith hadn’t just “taken off the gloves” with the move. It “looks like he’s boxed them up, taped up the box, and sent them to long-term storage,” Kirschner said on a new episode of his “Justice Matters” podcast.
Smith encouraged Chutkan to streamline the jury selection process with a questionnaire for potential jurors, ban their details from being public, and prohibit direct contact between attorneys and jurors.
The motion referred to Republican 2024 front-runner Trump’s attack on social media of a court official in his civil fraud trial in New York, which prompted a judge to slap the former president with a gag order.
Kirschner is a bit “extra.” I do watch him pretty regularly, because he does cite source material, and he generally makes good observations. This one is not one of those.
It’s true that Jack Smith is consistently urging the Court to do something about Trump’s stochastic terrorism. As yet, Judge Chutkan hasn’t done anything. There will be a hearing to address this on Monday, and we’ll find out what happens then. Kirschner misstates this as Judge Chutkan will put a tailored gag order in place, when he should present it as his strong hope.
That’s my point. None of them have. And none of them show any real desire to do so, outside of token gestures. Maybe they’re just as in fear for their lives as everybody else. But whatever the motivation, the judges flatly refuse to take substantive action. The most they’ll do is schedule a hearing for weeks in the future (while Trump continues to puke up his nonsense daily), where they’ll discuss maybe possibly having another hearing on whether or not Trump did anything wrong.
And I’ve watched Kirschner several times myself. My biggest problem with him is that he keeps acting like whatever he’s talking about is going to be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back and this time, this time!, the judges have really had enough and are going to do something, even though none of them have actually done a damn thing.
Justice Engoron in New York moved swiftly to address Trump’s attacking his clerk, although he stopped short of applying actual consequences. Of all the judges presiding over Trump’s many court cases, he’s been the most “find out,” and even he hasn’t really done anything to hold Trump accountable.
Any other criminal defendant would have had bond revoked and be held in detention pending trial long ago. Trump, on the other hand, crickets.
And then Trump responded by leaving the courtroom and attacking the judge himself minutes later. Nothing was done.
No he hasn’t. He’s barely got to the “and” in “fuck around and find out”.
(And for the record, I’m not trying to sound argumentative. I’m just pointing out that even the little he’s done has accomplished exactly nothing.)
Totally fair, I don’t take offense.
Engoron did fine several Trump attorneys for frivolity, found Trump and his associates liable for fraud with summary judgment, and ruled that the Trump Organization has its business certificates revoked and goes into receivership. Those are most definitely in the world of “find out.”
I understand your point and would agree in more normal circumstances.
He fined (if I recall correctly) two judges $7500 each, and I’m sure those will be passed to Trump (not that he’ll pay, but still…_).
Trump has been found liable for fraud in the past, so it’s not like he cares about his civil record. He’s had to pay out $25 million for Trump University settlements. He had to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million and went on to repeat the same defamation less than 24 hours later. We also do not know how this particular case is going to play out, but once appeals, etc. are factored in, he’ll probably be long dead before any of the consequences actually happen. Right now, in Trump’s mind, the net impact is $0. Monetary fines, even in the tens of millions of dollars, do exactly nothing to a person who even by realistic estimates is worth at least $2.5 billion with half a billion cash on hand.
So yeah, Engoron has done more than most so I guess he deserves credit for that. However, he still has yet to do anything that’s actually impactful. He’s more than smart enough to know by now that monetary fines mean nothing to Trump, but yet even he seems to be unwilling to take significant action even after Trump made threats to the judge himself. Outside of his own courtroom. Mere minutes after issuing the limited gag order. If it were anyone else, they’d have been dragged out of that press conference and into a jail cell for contempt of court at the very least.