Legal expert says judge might put 'eight-year-old narcissist' Trump in a holding cell
Former President Donald Trump has already been fined twice for violating gag orders in the civil fraud trial in New York, and this week, Judge Tanya Chutkan reinstated her own gag order in the 2020 election interference criminal case, prompting Trump to already lash out at her and possibly violate that order too.
Ultimately, Trump can't help himself, argued former prosecutor A. Scott Bolden on Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's "All In" — and it's going to drag him down.
"If this were a Greek tragedy, the course at the beginning would tell us that Donald Trump is going to violate every attempt by the judge to rein him in and end up in jail," said anchor Chris Hayes. "Then we would just sort of watch it play out. That's really how I feel. Like, this dude is going to do it, isn't he? What do you think? As someone who's practicing these courts on both sides, what do you think of the latest one?"
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"If he was in therapy, they'd call him the eight-year-old narcissist and that there's nothing else they could do about it," said Bolden. "He's just hopelessly who he is."
"There's a lot this judge can do about it," Bolden continued. "I have said repeatedly, publicly and privately, that Donald Trump has never dealt with a criminal justice system before. Civil is different. In a criminal justice system, the federal judge has a lifetime appointee. He is no match, no matter how much money he may or may not have, for a sitting federal judge. And it's incremental. He has violated the direct order, she let them brief the issue, and now she's put the order back in place. And within minutes, within hours, he violated it. That is the attack to potential, one potential witness in Barr, who is his attorney general, who is most likely going to be called as a witness, and then he attacked the judge, who is, quote, court personnel. She did not name herself in that court order, but she is court personnel."
"They can hold a hearing, she's got to take testimony, and then she can find them in contempt of the specific order," added Bolden. "She can fine him or even worse, I keep reading that he's not going to be locked up or she won't lock him up because of these challenges, as far as administrative challenges. But that's not necessarily the case. The federal judge can put him in a holding cell until he cools off for a couple hours. But it will be incremental. Probably a fine now after hearing."
Watch the video below or at the link.
A. Scott Bolden says Trump is like an "eight-year-old narcissist" www.youtube.com