Here's why we may finally see a 'more muted' Trump: legal expert

Former President Donald Trump has spent the last several weeks viciously attacking and insulting judges, prosecutors, and witnesses against him in his investigations and criminalindictments for the 2020 election plot. But now, suggested NYU professor Ryan Goodman on MSNBC's "The Last Word" Thursday evening, some factors come into play that may actually force him to keep his mouth shut.

This comes as Trump, after frantic urging from his lawyers, pulled the plug on a planned press conference on Monday, during which he promised to announce definitive evidence the presidential election was in fact stolen from him.

"You've been helping us cover all of these prosecutions of Donald Trump," said anchor Lawrence O'Donnell. "It is so uncharacteristic of him to get hit with this indictment, and stop all of the previous reactions that he has had to all of the previous indictments and that he just randomly has. Now we see the lawyers convincing him, or him claiming the lawyers have convinced him, to shut up about it on Monday. Who knows how that really happened? He had nothing to say on Monday anyway. This may be temporary. It may all explode tomorrow. But today is a different day for Donald Trump."

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"I had the exact same reaction," said Goodman. "It is the fact that he has four criminal cases. That cannot be easy. That has to weigh on you. I think it's something more. Of course he wants to try his case in a place where, in the court of public opinion and not in the court of law, where facts and law matter. But there are two big things that are coming up."

"In the Georgia case and in the D.C. case, the judge is going to be deciding when is there a trial date," Goodman continued. "D.C. in particular, that's going to happen on August 28th. When the judge said essentially, you keep doing this, it's going to be a factor in why it's going to be sooner. So that's one reason that he may be putting a muzzle, it least temporarily. And the other is, and this is where we have experts on the show better than I, if he's out on bail, three cases soon to be four cases, in Georgia in the statute requires that a judge find that he is not a risk of flight, not in the danger to the community, and does not pose a risk to obstructing justice or interfering with witnesses. I know in D.C., Judge Chutkan is going to be focused on that like a laser. No prosecutor, no judge wants to see a defendant inciting violence, and Trump has a long history."

"Those, I think, are the constellation of reasons why we may see, for at least a short time, a more muted Donald Trump," concluded Goodman.

Watch the video below or at the link.

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