Hoping to thread the difficult waters between “being held in contempt of court” and “continuing to act in contempt of court,” Donald Trump came up with a new foolproof strategy. Ask the judge to join his personal wingnut bookclub!
He’s argued that his ReTruths aren’t endorsements… but he wanted the judge to check out all the stuff he planned to endorse anyway.
That description sounds like Trump took a page from the pro se handbook and tried to bypass carefully crafted procedural protections, detailed motion practice, and the weight of days worth of testimony and wanted the judge to become so dazzled by the legal brilliance of *checks notes* JONATHAN TURLEY and call off the whole case. That wasn’t quite the situation (though one suspects Trump had a fever dream that this would be a side effect) as much as he hoped to get pre-clearance to push the gag order.
Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles then asked Judge Merchan if he would look at the big stack of news articles that Trump waves around the courthouse from people like Tom Fitton, Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz and others who say that the case should be thrown out. Trump wanted Merchan to read them to determine whether it would violate the gag order if he posted them online. Merchan said he was not going to issue preemptive rulings or read the articles. (As we previously reported, Trump pays a staffer $105,000 to follow him around with a wireless printer to scour the internet to find positive articles for him to read).
Obviously, the justice system doesn’t indulge defendants with advisory opinions on how not to violate straightforward orders. Susan Necheles and Todd Blanche possess all the legal acumen necessary to succinctly advise Trump if the latest fawning dispatch from the peanut gallery breaches the gag order.
And the lawyers embarrassed themselves with this request because they already know this. They only demeaned themselves to make this request because they’ve already told him what he can’t publish and he decided that he didn’t like their professional answer.
So they crawled to the judge to see if he could do the job that their client won’t let them do.
And they’re probably lucky that he merely declined. This is the sort of “golly, we’re just too stupid to read your order” request from sophisticated lawyers who know better that could well earn a harsh tongue-lashing of its own. I mean… it’s hard to show more contempt for a court than making them read Fitton, Turley, Levin, and Dershowitz.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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