Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance — who spent years investigating former President Donald Trump — laid out how judges need to handle the former president as his multiple criminal indictments proceed to trial, in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday evening.
"We were talking previously about the importance of a judge in a case like this, keeping things moving," said Cooper. "What have you learned about the former president in your experiences in court?"
"Chaos agent," said Vance simply. "He is an agent of chaos, and I think his whole career is kind of going from one disaster to another, and distracting attention from the last disaster, moving to another, but being happy that he's in attention. Right now, politically, he's completely consumed all the airtime on the Republican nomination for president even while he's being indicted."
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"How does that play out in a courtroom, or in a legal battle with him?" Cooper pressed him.
"Well, I think what it means, first and foremost for the judges in this case is, how do you manage a man like Donald Trump as a defendant?" said Vance. "An average defendant who has said what he said, who has done what he's done, under indictment, would be hauled back into court and threatened with contempt, incarceration, or a huge fine. None of those things necessarily are dissuading factors for Donald Trump. Again, I'm speculating, but were he to be put in jail on contempt for doing something as stupid as his picture with him and a bat and D.A. [Alvin] Bragg's picture right next to him — clearly intimidating, but were he to be put in Rikers Island, I honestly think he'd probably use it as a mechanism to, you know, to excite his crowd."
"No judge has really — and this is unprecedented. So there is no judge who has experience with a character like this," said Cooper.
"No, I don't think ever with a character like this," Vance agreed. "But clearly, the judges that are involved are experienced, and I think they all, bottom line, are going to really need to control their courtroom. They need to be the manager, to set expectations of decorum and what is responsible behavior and what is irresponsible behavior. And they need to hold the former president to account ... ultimately I think these judges are going to make it work."
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