Donald Trump on Saturday said he welcomed the prospect of going to jail for violating a gag order in his upcoming New York hush money trial.
“I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela — It will be my GREAT HONOR,” the former president wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post attacking New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s case.
It was not the first time Trump has likened himself to a martyr as he faces a flurry of criminal charges.
In an October rant against his various lawsuits, the presumptive Republican nominee also compared himself to Mandela, the former president of South Africa who spent 27 years in prison for his anti-apartheid activism.
And last week, Trump took to Truth Social to share a message that likened his legal troubles to the persecution of Jesus Christ.
Saturday’s tirade occurred just over a week before the trial is scheduled to begin on April 15.
That day, jury selection will get underway in the state’s criminal prosecution of the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business documents, allegedly in order to hide a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has accused Merchan of being compromised because of his daughter’s role at a progressive consulting firm that has worked for Democrats.
Trump’s social media rant on Saturday was the latest of several that he has posted about the judge’s daughter since Merchan first imposed an initial gag order at the end of March.
That order prohibited Trump from making public statements about the case’s witnesses, jurors and lawyers. He was also banned from publicly speaking about court staff, employees in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and their family members. That first gag order came in response to Trump’s repeated calls for the judge to recuse himself.
One day after the first gag order was imposed on March 26, Trump went after Merchan’s daughter on social media.
Soon after that, Merchan granted prosecutors a request to expand the scope of the order to prohibit direct attacks on Merchan’s family members and the family of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Under the expanded order, Trump can still criticize Merchan and Bragg individually. But he is not allowed to target their families publicly.
Playing with the fire of his gag orders is becoming routine for Trump.
In October, Judge Arthur Engoron threatened Trump with jail time for violating a similar order in a civil case and ultimately issued him $10,000 in fines.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign seized on Saturday’s Mandela comments.
“Imagine being so self-centered that you compare yourself to Jesus Christ and Nelson Mandela all within the span of little more than a week: that’s Donald Trump for you,” Biden campaign spokesperson Jasmine Harris said on Saturday.
Manhattan prosecutors suggested Friday that Donald Trump violated a gag order in his hush-money criminal case this week by assailing the judge’s daughter and making a false claim about her on social media.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office asked Judge Juan M. Merchan to “clarify or confirm” the scope of the gag order, which he issued on Tuesday, and to direct the former president and presumptive Republican nominee to “immediately desist from attacks on family members.”
In a letter to Merchan, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass argued that the gag order’s ban on statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff or their families makes the judge’s daughter off-limits from Trump’s rhetoric. He said Trump should be punished for further violations.
Trump’s lawyers contend the DA’s office is misinterpreting the order and that it doesn’t prohibit him from commenting about Loren Merchan, a political consultant whose firm has worked on campaigns for Trump’s rival Joe Biden and other Democrats.
“The Court cannot ‘direct’ President Trump to do something that the gag order does not require,” Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles wrote. “To ‘clarify or confirm’ the meaning of the gag order in the way the People suggest would be to expand it.”
The trial, which involves allegations Trump falsified payment records in a scheme to cover up negative stories during his 2016 presidential campaign, is scheduled to begin April 15. Trump denies wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
In his posts Wednesday on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that Loren Merchan “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump,’” and he wrongly accused her of posting a social media photo showing him behind bars.
A spokesperson for New York’s state court system said Trump’s claim was false and that the social media account Trump was referencing no longer belonged to Loren Merchan.
The account on X, formerly known as Twitter, “is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screenname since she deleted the account. Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned,” court spokesperson Al Baker said.
In the same Truth Social posts, Trump complained that his gag order was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional.” He said that Judge Merchan was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals.
The gag order, which prosecutors had requested, bars Trump from either making or directing other people to make public statements on his behalf about jurors or potential witnesses in the hush-money trial, such as his lawyer turned nemesis Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels.
The order, echoing one in Trump’s Washington, D.C., election interference criminal case, also prohibits any statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families. Trump, however, is free to criticize Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat whose office is prosecuting Trump — but Steinglass wants his family off limits, too.
In his letter, Steinglass implored the judge to “make abundantly clear” to Trump that the gag order protects his family, Bragg’s family and family members of all other individuals covered by the gag order. He urged Merchan to warn Trump “that his recent conduct is contumacious and direct him to immediately desist.”
A gag order violation could result in Trump being held in contempt of court, fined or even jailed.
Trump’s lawyers argued against any such warnings, citing constitutional concerns about restricting Trump’s speech further while he’s campaigning for president and fighting criminal charges. See More
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