Watergate prosecutor unsure if fine can stop Trump from breaking gag order — but jail will

Former Watergate prosecutor and "Sisters in Law" co-host Jill Wine-Banks expects that the gag order against former President Donald Trump won't be removed, but that it still will not stop him from breaking the gag order, and she isn't certain what will.

Last week, Trump still had his attack on Judge Arthur Engoron's clerk on his website. It prompted the judge to issue his first punishment for violating the gag order.

Speaking to MSNBC's Alicia Menendez on Sunday, Wine-Banks explained that the "simple" answer is that there is no chance Trump's lawyers will win their challenge against the order.

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"It will be reinstated because he is a criminal defendant," said Wine-Banks. "He isn't anything else in that courtroom but a criminal defendant. Criminal defendants cannot taint the jury pool, threaten witnesses, threaten in-court personnel. They simply cannot be allowed to."

Judges are limited to what they can do in this case, she explained, because no one wants to punish Trump without the support of a jury, fearing a "horrendous uprising of his supporters by putting him in jail."

"But the penalty is going to have to go from $5,000 to $15,000 to $500,000," Wine-Banks said. "I don't know what the amount is that would make him stop doing what he does. It was inevitable he would violate the gag order. It is inevitable that he will violate it again. We know from the E. Jean Carroll case that even millions of dollars in a fine doesn't stop him."

In that case, even after Trump lost his second libel suit, and the jury found him responsible for sexual assault, he still attacked Carroll during a CNN town hall.

"This next verdict for him in that case is going to be an even higher fine. at some point, maybe money will work. But at some point, it's going to have to be moving the trial date up or jailing him."

She went on to say that if she was representing someone in court and his name was not Trump, the person would be jailed "a long time ago."

Trump is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, leading by wide margins in all recent national polls, as well as early state GOP presidential primary polls.

See the conversation in the video below or at the link here.

Watergate prosecutor unsure if fine can stop Trump from breaking gag order — but jail willyoutu.be