Donald Trump criticized the judge of his hush-money trial and targeted the witnesses, including the judge’s daughter, following a guilty verdict.
This move, seen as an attempt to alter the trial’s narrative, may indicate Trump’s strategy to influence the judge’s sentencing, potentially aiming for imprisonment.
“To understate it, he’s certainly not remorseful,” according to Jerry Goldfeder, a senior advisor at Cozen O’Connor and the Director of the Voting Rights and Democracy Project at Fordham Law School.
“You really take that into account when you’re sentencing someone, what their attitude about it is. Since he called Merchan a tyrant and the whole system is rigged, etcetera, etcetera, that cannot play too well in the judge’s mind when the time comes for sentencing.”
Jurors convicted Trump of 34 felony charges related to falsifying business records to hide payments intended to suppress reports of an extramarital affair in a sophisticated “catch and kill” operation during his 2016 presidential campaign to sway the election outcome.
During his official first press briefing following being the first former president of the country to be criminally convicted, Trump vented his anger towards the judge once again.
“We had a conflicted judge, highly conflicted, there has never been a more conflicted judge,” he said. “You know what the conflict is. Nobody wants to write about it and I’m not allowed to talk about it. If I do, he said I could be put in jail. We will play that game a bit longer.”
Trump criticized the gag order restricting him from discussing jurors, witnesses, and court personnel, which was extended to include the judge’s family after attacks on the judge’s daughter.
Trump accused the judge’s daughter of biased influence and made derogatory remarks about the judge. The sentencing is set for July 11, close to the Republican National Convention.
The judge will evaluate Trump’s actions, including contempt for violating the gag order, during the sentencing process.
“This defendant was held in criminal contempt for 10 incidents that took place during the trial, and he hasn’t – and I do not expect that he will be – showing any remorse,” according to Michael Obus, a former justice in the Criminal Division for New York County on the State of New York Supreme Court for close to twenty years.
“The fact that defendant Trump was the president of the United States and may be again is not lost on the judge. Like it or not, that circumstance and all that goes with it simply cannot be ignored. it is part of the calculus to be considered,” Obus says. “But one way Trump could guarantee spending some time in jail would be to violate the gag order one more time.”
