Trump about to be hit with 'significant tactical disadvantage' for defying judge: expert

Former President Donald Trump has boxed himself into a serious disadvantage in his Manhattan criminal trial with his constant violations of Judge Juan Merchan's orders, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

This comes after Trump spoke about the first witness at trial, his former ally and National Enquirer boss David Pecker, who described how he orchestrated "catch and kill" schemes to protect Trump during the 2016 election, similar to the purpose of his alleged business fraud to conceal the hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump claimed Pecker has been a "nice" person so far — although Manhattan prosecutors argue this was a veiled threat and a violation of the former president's gag order.

"Now, it sounds innocent enough to maybe some people," said Tapper. "But the prosecutor said, today, quote, 'This is a message to Pecker: be nice.'"

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"We've heard that before," said co-panelist Jamie Gangel. "I mean, this is sort of Donald Trump's M.O. ... maybe Judge Merchan is waiting, because just having this hanging over Donald Trump's head might cause — but it's not, nothing is going to restrain Trump. I don't know. One of the tricky things here for Judge Merchan, and the lawyers can talk about this, other than a $1,000 fine [for each violation], which is not going to bother Donald Trump too much — when you step it up, it's incarceration. And I think we've all pretty much, you read that's not going to happen."

"There are a couple of intermediate options to that," chimed in Khardori. "If I were the D.A.'s office, I'd be considering again, it's very possible all this stuff can come into evidence. But second, and they alluded to this last week, if he keeps it up, I think they're going to stop giving his lawyers advanced notices of which witnesses are being called on which days. And that is an actual significant tactical disadvantage in a trial, because if you don't know which witnesses are going on which days, you don't know ... who needs to be ready to cross-examine, which evidentiary issues you need to be prepared to address, what documents you need to have to put into evidence to impeach someone."

All of that, he said, is "way more significant than $15,000."

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