- Twice this week, Trump’s hush-money judge has warned him about misbehaving in and out of court.
- If the judge makes good on his threats of incarceration, Trump probably won’t be carted to jail.
- A quick stint locked up behind the courtroom may be all it takes to put the fear of jail in him.
Twice this week — first when he was found in contempt for a 10th gag-order violation, then when he audibly heckled Stormy Daniels — former President Donald Trump has been warned about misbehaving in his hush-money trial.
Could Trump’s next courtroom outburst or gag-violating Truth Social post really be the final straw that gets him locked up for contempt of court?
Yes, courthouse veterans said Wednesday — but that doesn’t have to mean a correction-bus ride to New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail.
Instead, Justice Juan Merchan of the New York Supreme Court is far more likely to give Trump a taste of incarceration by ordering a short stint in a small, secure space right behind the courtroom, experts said.
“It’s a small staging room, or witness room,” Arthur Aidala, who knows the space well, said.
His client Harvey Weinstein ate lunch there with his legal team every day during the former movie mogul’s 2020 sex-crimes trial, held in the same 15th-floor courtroom that Trump’s trial is in.
“They could definitely put him in that room Mr. Weinstein used to use and say he can’t leave,” Aidala, who recently got Weinstein’s conviction overturned, said.
The room has one window, cream-yellow walls, and a small conference table ringed by wooden chairs with vinyl cushions.
The door locks from the outside.
“We went through that door 20 or 30 times. It’s pretty grimy in there,” Aidala of Aidala Bertuna & Kamins said.
“You could fit maybe 10 people,” Aidala added of the space. “One former president and nine Secret Service agents.”
‘Therapeutic remand’
Lawyers have a name for when a Manhattan judge orders a defendant to cool his heels behind the courtroom for a few hours, Arnold Levine, a longtime public defender, said.
“It’s called ‘therapeutic remand,'” said Levine, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York’s Homicide Defense Task Force.
“It’s the judge saying, ‘Here’s a taste of jail for the day so that you realize this is serious business,'” he said.
In 1999, Levine was “therapeutically remanded” for contempt of court himself after an argument with a misdemeanor judge in the same courthouse.
Another judge soon let him out, but not before Levine spent time handcuffed to a courtroom bench and then locked up inside a fourth-floor holding pen.
If prosecutors accused Trump of violating his gag order again, it would trigger the same dayslong process of motion filing and oral arguments that preceded his two previous contempt-of-court sanctions, which have amounted to just $10,000 in total fines.
“You get more due process” when you commit an act of contempt outside the courtroom, Levine said.
But if Trump acts out inside the courtroom again — say, if he heckles Daniels once more when her cross-examination continues Thursday — he risks the same immediate, on-the-spot “summary contempt” arraignment and sentencing that Levine faced in 1999.
There would likely be two big differences. Trump wouldn’t be locked behind actual bars since there’s no holding cell behind Merchan’s courtroom.
And Trump would likely not be handcuffed at any point while in custody.
Trump was not cuffed during his 2023 hush-money arraignment. Former Secret Service agents told Business Insider at the time that cuffing the former president would hamper their ability to protect him should he ever need to be thrown to the floor or rushed to safety.
‘Take charge’
For most defendants in Manhattan’s criminal courtrooms, incarceration is heralded by the judge announcing, “Officers at the rail,” Matthew Galluzzo, a veteran defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, said.
“It’s the worst feeling,” hearing those words, Galluzzo said, adding: “It’s when the judge calls the court officers and tells them to surround the defendant so that he doesn’t try to walk out of the courtroom.”
But Trump already has at least two court officers standing behind him at all times in Merchan’s courtroom, for his own protection. His officers are already “at the rail.”
Reality would instead set in with the judge giving what’s usually the final instruction to the court officers, “Take charge,” Galluzzo said.
At that point, Trump would be led through a door to Merchan’s right and back to what was once Weinstein’s grim and grimy lunchroom.
“It’s extremely rare,” Galluzzo said of defendant gag orders in general. “Being held in contempt for violating one is even more rare. And this happening to an ex-president would be unprecedented.”
Dip his toes in the water
Still, a stint locked up behind the courtroom is the likeliest way Merchan would “dip Trump’s toes in the water for a little bit and give him a taste of what a jail cell would really be like,” Galluzzo said.
“I think that’s the next step in the escalation,” said Daniel Scott, a veteran Manhattan defense lawyer who’s repped clients for 40 years at the courthouse where Trump is on trial.
“Rikers, logistically, would be a total nightmare,” Scott said, adding: “It’s bad enough for Joe Schmoe.”
Trump’s trial is in its third week of testimony. He is charged with falsifying 34 business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment that silenced Daniels just 11 days before the 2016 election.
He has denied falsifying business records and has said his gag order is an infringement on his right to campaign for office.
–
Business Insider
