Incarceration is on the table if Trump DOJ defies courts: retired judge

President Donald Trump and his administration have been accused of defying orders given by Judge James Boasberg, which has led to some speculation about what he and other judges will do if the administration refuses to comply with their rulings.

In an interview with Politico, retired federal judge Shira Scheindlin argued that holding Trump officials in civil contempt, rather than criminal contempt, was a more likely scenario given that the Trump Department of Justice would likely decline to prosecute a criminal contempt case against its own officials.

However, she emphasized that this doesn't mean Trump officials would get away without potentially facing jail time.

"The remedy in civil contempt, believe it or not, can include incarceration," she said. "Usually it’s fines. If it was a lawyer, you might file a grievance against the lawyer. That could be done if these lawyers either lie to the court or personally violate the order — you might want to bring a grievance before the grievance committee of the local bar where they’re admitted, something like that. So it could be fines, could be a grievance, but in theory, it could also be jailing somebody. I did that only once in my time on the bench. In a civil contempt case, I actually put somebody in jail because he was so defiant, and then... he did what he was told to do."

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One issue with this, however, is that Boasberg would still need to rely on a U.S. Marshal to obey his orders to bring the Trump official to prison.

"That is part of the executive branch — just the U.S. Marshal escorting the person over to the federal facility," she said. "So it still has that problem, but you don’t need a prosecutor."