After being threatened with potential jail time, Donald Trump removed posts from Truth Social that violated the judge’s gag order.
Former President Donald Trump has removed the social media posts that Judge Juan Merchan ruled violated the gag order he is under for his New York criminal hush money trial.
Trump was fined $9,000 earlier on Tuesday for violating the gag order by criticizing expected trial witnesses nine times in posts on social media and his campaign page.
Trump was ordered to remove the posts by 2:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday and pay the fine by close of business day on Friday, May 3.
The posts that cost Trump $9,000 are now gone.
It turns out that all it takes to get Trump to comply with a court order is to threaten to toss him behind bars. Trump has a campaign event scheduled for Wednesday, so it will be interesting to see if he can keep it together in front of his fans. How Trump could be incarcerated and what the logistics would look like could be challenging, but the ex-president is taking the threat seriously enough that he is not pushing his luck by leaving the Truth Social posts up.
Donald Trump wants to be a martyr and get sent to jail. He thinks jail will help his presidential campaign; so far, the judge isn’t playing along, but if Trump keeps it up, Judge Merchan doesn’t seem like the type of judge who will tolerate nonsense.
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