Ex-judge: Trump knows jail is 'a real possibility' after gag order tightens

A retired federal judge warns that Donald Trump may want to heed the expanded gag order or wind up laying his head in a New York lockup.

"The first thing you can do is to give a warning," said Shira Scheindlin, a former federal judge told CNN's Kaitlin Collins Monday night. "I think that's been covered."

On Monday, Justice Juan Merchan amended a gag order issued last week to include his own political strategist executive daughter at the behest of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, court records show.

"This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” Merchan wrote. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game,’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”

Meanwhile, Scheindlin, who retired after 22 years of ruling from a Manhattan federal court, explained that if Trump can't abide by the new terms, next recourse is to "give fines" to former President Donald Trump, as was the action taken by Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron while he was presiding over Trump's civil fraud case.

Failing that, there's jail.

ALSO READ: No, Donald Trump, fraud is not protected by the First Amendment

Engoron warned about that same sanction after fining the 45th president twice for violating a gag order for disparaging his court clerk, noting, "I don’t want anybody killed.”

"But the third step, and it has to happen sometimes with contempt, is actually putting somebody in the cell until they understand and that the behavior is absolutely unacceptable," she said.

Scheindlin cautioned that such a move would be a very last resort given that the defendant in this case happens to be a former president who is also the presumptive Republican nominee to become the 47th president.

"Now, is that what anybody wants to do?" she asked rhetorically. "No, because that would only make him a martyr; so nobody really wants to put him in a cell."

Should Trump breach the gag order, then Merchan could pull that drastic lever. She said, "he has to know, I think that that is a real possibility — if he doesn't stop doing what the judges ordered, that he stopped doing."

Trump's also being handled with kid gloves in the case where he's charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to shield allegedly damning intel from adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Trump has pleaded not guilty. The trial is scheduled to begin in Lower Manhattan on April 15.

"He's again, being treated differently than any other defendant because any other defendant would be incarcerated if they did not stop the behavior," she said. "But we've got a problem here... it's really hard to muzzle him with the threat of incarceration because as I said, that would only make him a martyr."

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