I’ve long supported community service as the appropriate sentence for Donald Trump. The logistics of housing the Secret Service detail (to which Trump, as a former president, is entitled) in jail are too difficult, and imprisonment runs the risk of making him a martyr or at least distressingly popular among other white-collar inmates
With some of his most prominent trials delayed, including the federal prosecutions of him in Washington, D.C. for the January 6 insurrection and in Florida for the Mar-a-Lago documents, as well as the Fulton County, Georgia, trial for trying to overturn results in the state, I hadn’t thought much lately about sentencing. But now the question of punishment for contempt of court is front-and-center. On Monday night, New York Judge Juan Merchan issued a stunning five-page ruling in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial that begins on April 15 in a Manhattan courtroom and is being prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Merchan extended the gag order to his own family because the physical safety of his daughter—wrongly accused by the Trump team of bias against the defendant—is imperiled by the former president of the United States mouthing off about her. This is the horrifying reality of life in the United States right now, and of course, it will get much worse if Trump returns to the Oval Office.
Judge Merchan wrote:
“It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings. The threat is very real. Admonitions are not enough, nor is reliance on self-restraint.”
The judge told Trump that if he kept it up, he would prevent him from learning the names (and thus the backgrounds) of potential jurors, which would seriously impair the defense during jury selection. But, of course, the likelihood is that Trump will re-offend. He can’t help himself, as we saw when he continued to slander E. Jean Carroll after she won her defamation case against him, resulting in an $83 million judgment.
So, what are Merchan’s options if—no, when—Trump violates the gag order? He could fine him, as Judge Arthur Engoron did in a recent civil case prosecuted by New York State where he stopped short of holding Trump in contempt and slapped him on the wrist with a $5,000 fine.
Trump would likely have no trouble paying a much steeper fine, maybe seven figures rather than four, and he might actually welcome being jailed for a night or two. This would help him play the victim card and boost his campaign. (Recall that the Bible-and-sneaker salesman turned his mugshot from the Georgia trial into a merch opportunity.) For that reason, Merchan should avoid these options.
But how about community service? I had originally suggested a soup kitchen, but that runs the risk of Trump throwing paper towels at poor people, as he did while president when he visited Puerto Rico after a hurricane. Ladling soup in the Bronx might make him look beneficent on Fox. An Old Goats reader suggested he be assigned instead to pick up trash by the side of the road, a punishment sometimes used by judges in New York City cases. Perfect! This would punish him, humiliate him, and—because it’s hard to imagine anything he would less like to do—deter him.
Of course, he’d need a long trash stick because even after Ozempic—I have no inside knowledge, but he looked thinner to me when I saw him in person in court last week—the 77-year-old is still too heavy and out of shape to bend down. The orange man in the orange jumpsuit would need help picking up all of the Styrofoam coffee cups, beer bottles, and used condoms.
