Ex-Prosecutor Warns Fining Donald Trump 'Sends Exactly The Wrong Message''

It's the "wrong incentive," argued Andrew Weissmann.
LOADINGERROR LOADING

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on Sunday questioned the fines that have been slapped on Donald Trump for breaking a gag order imposed on him during his civil fraud trial in New York.

Judge Arthur Engoron first fined the former president $5,000 and then last Wednesday an additional $10,000 for ignoring the order that banned him from discussing the judge’s staff in public.

Weissmann feared the $10,000 fine “sends exactly the wrong message,” he told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki.

Trump is “really good at power dynamics and getting a signal of what he can get away with and what lines people are willing to draw,” Weissmann explained. “So I think $10,000 in some ways is sending the wrong incentive.”

Instead, Weismann suggested a judge must “do something” that will make Trump “adhere to the judge’s rules.” Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal had earlier suggested to Psaki that judges would soon be left with no option but to send Trump to prison for violating the terms of the orders.

“Judges are going to need to really stiffen their spines because they have to worry about the violence that can come from the call and response that the former president is wielding,” agreed Weissmann.

Later Sunday, in Trump’s separate election interference case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan reinstated a gag order prohibiting the ex-president from disparaging prosecutors, witnesses and court staff.

Watch the video below.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot