Former President Donald Trump could face a real threat of pretrial detention if he continues to defy gag orders from judges, said former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" Thursday.
This comes shortly after the former president was hit with a $10,000 fine for violating a gag order in the New York civil fraud case — which, said Kirschner, could be small potatoes compared to the consequences for breaking the gag order in the federal 2020 election case.
"I wonder if you can speak to two things," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "One, does that intersect with the federal government's assessment of the current threat environment and their intersectionality with grievances about the 2020 election and 2024 election and Trump's trials. And are they amplified by real concerns about witness tampering?"
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"Yeah, I think, you know, Jack Smith has been very forward leaning, very direct," said Kirschner. "I wouldn't say hyperbolic, but he has pulled no punches in his court filings, and I was kind of happy to see that when you get about 10 or 11 pages into this most recent filing where he is arguing hard in favor of why Judge Chutkan should lift the temporary stay she put in place because, of course, the moment she put that stay in place, Donald Trump began to violate the gag order that, yes, had been stayed in sort of two of the three ways he had been gagged, he had been prohibited from speaking."
"If I could read just one sentence, Nicolle, on page 11, where Jack Smith really pulls it all together and highlights why Donald Trump is different than literally every other defendant," Kirschner continued. "The special counsel's team writes: 'There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the judge as a fraud and hack, attack the prosecutor as a deranged thug, and promising if you go after me, I'm coming after you, target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility even suggesting one witness's actions warrant the punishment of death.'"
"You know, that is powerful," added Kirschner. "It's accurate. I think it sings, as far as legal pleadings go. And this, I think, demonstrates why Donald Trump is such a danger and not only needs to be gagged, but when you plow through 30 pages of this pleading on page 31, you finally see the mention of the potential of revocation of release and pretrial detention. So, you know, Jack Smith is not pulling any punches ... that means jail pending trial."
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