Trump is the 'elephant in the room' in co-defendant's bail hearing: legal expert
Trump's sucking up much of the oxygen inside a Georgia courtroom, even when he's not physically there.
Harrison Floyd was seated in a Fulton County courtroom for a hearing to determine if he he violated his bond terms.
He was watching while DA Fani Willis stood at the lectern blaming Floyd, executive director of Black Voices For Trump, for flagrantly ignoring some of the terms of his release.
"What he really did was spit on the report and refused to oblige to three of the seven conditions of his bond order," she said, holding the document up for the judge to see.
Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was more concerned about interpreting what constituted a violation.
"I think that it also is very much dependent on the specific facts of the tweets and communications at issue here and it can't be so broadly, uh, defined to cover all other co-defendants," he said during the hearing.
When the judge spoke about the language of those terms, Ryan Goodman, an NYU law school professor and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, believes he was actually speaking to the former POTUS.
"I thought the judge's cadence signaled something; he nearly swallows his words — I think that is Trump," Goodman said during an appearance on CNN's "Outfront" with Erin Burnett. "Trump is very present in the room but not mentioned as much, he's the elephant in the room."
Central to the hearing was whether Floyd, one of 19 defendants in the RICO case, harassed witnesses and other people on social media, thus severing the terms of his release pending trial that include not communicating directly or indirectly about the details of the case or with any of the co-defendants or known witnesses.
The judge continued: "So on the issue of modification, I think that's something we can revisit and let time to consider unless there's something um parties would like to address now, uh, and want the court to be able to considers specifically what they would like to see as a modification."
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Goodman suggests the judge is doling Floyd a great deal of grace, and that is essentially thanks to Trump.
"I think that's maybe why the judge was so forgiving on where he draws the line on intimidation, because if he draws the line on this particular defendant than he's drawing the same line against Donald Trump."
"So I do think judges are bending over backwards."