Why 'Judge Chutkan is ultimately going to win' the 'power struggle' against Trump: legal analyst

During Saturday's episode of Velshi on MSNBC, former United States attorney and MSNBC legal analyst Carol Lam spoke with host Ali Velshi about whether United States Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's gag order against ex-President Donald Trump will be successful.

Velshi asked Lam, "When this case was first brought in both in Jack Smith's case and the [Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis case, in both cases, the magistrate judges put out a warning to Donald Trump, be careful about social media, be careful about what you do. He didn't seem to abide by that, so Jack Smith is now looking for a narrower gag order. Something that specifically prevents Donald Trump essentially from intimidating people involved in the cases. How do you think that's going to go? And how does that get handled, if Jack Smith gets his way in and gets something narrower, the question always becomes, how do you enforce a problem like Donald Trump and his social media?

Lam replied, "Sure, well, two things. One, Donald Trump has at his disposal a tool that defendants for the last couple hundred years simply did not have. This is the ability to press a button, and he has a huge megaphone on social media. That technology is fairly recent, so there's not a lot of case law around it. But, the other aspect is that this sort of a power struggle between Judge Chutkan and Donald Trump. And Judge Chutkan is ultimately going to win this battle. And this is why. She will do it in a measured way, and Jack Smith is proceeding in a measured way. And they're saying, 'Here is the evidence of what he's done in the past. Here's the concern about what he's going to do in the future.' And 'Judge Chutkan, what are the tools that you have in the tool box?' She doesn't want to arrest him and put him in custody until the election or until the trial — that is going to be problematic — but she can impose pretty considerable financial fines. She can say your first financial fine for your first transgression is going to be X amount of dollars.The next time you do it, it's going to be twice that amount. And she can keep going up."

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The former U.S. attorney continued, "So, once she imposes an order, once he violates that order, now we're not really talking about First Amendment so much anymore. We are talking about his violating the the courts order, and with respect to the line where the First Amendment is drawn. That's always a tricky line. But remember who Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan's ultimate audience is — it is the court of appeals and perhaps the supreme court. Who are they? They are judges. And they understand the importance of keeping control over a trial and the judicial system. So, I think ultimately they're going to play this correctly, and it it going to not go well for Donald Trump. It will be frustrating along the way. But that's where it's going to end up."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Ex-prosecutor on Jack Smith's 'narrower' gag order against Trumpwww.youtube.com

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