Trump 'desperately wants to avoid jail' despite bluster over gag order: insiders

This week Donald Trump will likely face the consequences of his actions when Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan will rule on sanctions against the former president for violating his gag order regarding disparaging witnesses and jurors in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial.

According to a report from the New York Times by Maggie Haberman and Jonah E. Bromwich, there is every reason to believe that the judge will come down hard on the former president with the possibility that he could go beyond financial penalties limited to $1,000 for each offense to ordering Trump spend some time in jail.

While there are serious doubts about whether the judge will go to that extreme with the former president, according to the new report, Merchan's harsh comments to Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche about gag order violations ("I am going to decide whether your client is in contempt or not. I keep asking you over and over again for a specific example, and I am not getting an answer.”) has Trump worried he may have gone too far.

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According to the Times, " Mr. Trump’s career-long habit of a ready-fire-aim stream of consciousness — on social media, on television, to newspaper reporters, to rally attendees — can now be held against him by prosecutors and a judge who has genuine power over him."

Noting that "The consequences so far have been minimal," Haberman and Bromwich added, "Mr. Trump is less moved by threats of being fined. Still, when he faced a similar punishment in a civil fraud trial late last year, he slowed his attacks on a court official after the penalties mounted."

Now as he faces a less-tolerant judge in Merchan, the former president is reportedly worried about a brief incarceration.

"Justice Merchan has yet to issue a ruling on whether to find Mr. Trump in contempt. While prosecutors have argued that Mr. Trump is 'angling' to be arrested, some people close to Mr. Trump insist privately that, for all his bravado, he desperately wants to avoid jail," the Times is reporting before adding, "... Justice Merchan set a new hearing for this week in which, once again, the former president’s statements will be in the spotlight: dissected, considered and, ultimately, judged."

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