WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.
Civil trial consequences are always only monetary - you can’t go to prison for a civil case. That’s part of why civil cases get away with having a much lower standard of evidence - essentially the plaintiff wins a civil case if it’s even slightly more likely than not but a prosecutor has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The purpose of that sort of bond is to prevent you from using funds you should use to pay damages on lawyers to fight the case further, not to prevent you from being able to fight it at all. By the point the bond was reduced the court had their eyes in his accounts and knew exactly what he could afford and could make some rough estimates based on the shakier parts of the assigned damages where damages might end up on appeal (it’s pretty common for damages to be reduced on appeal). I’d be willing to bet that the reduced bond was either close to what Trump could actually get without selling slow-to-liquidate assets (aka real estate) or close to where the court thinks damages might end up. You’ll notice he started hawking Bibles almost immediately afterward, likely because he needs more liquid funding in the short term.
I believe he’s been fined for it several times now, but the fine is set by law and is an amount that’s a pittance to Trump. Jailing him is an option but complicated since most jails don’t have remotely the capacity or security of a real prison and you’ve still got to figure out how to work his Secret Service detail into the picture. And also the protests from his cult if/when that happens.
Which is exactly why I mentioned it. He has never faced consequences from criminal charges, only civil court.
He would have done that regardless of whether he “needed” funds or not. Like most obscenely rich people, there is no such thing as “enough” wealth.
Which doesn’t really contradict my point that he effectively hasn’t faced any real consequences.
He’s a criminal. He shouldn’t be afforded the same security detail as his predecessors that weren’t. We don’t “have to” do anything. It was just decided as a society that this man, and others like him, should be given privileges that others don’t have.
This should never ever ever factor into what his punishment is. A functioning society needs a justice system that doesn’t cave to mobs.
Everything about this is abhorrant.
You don’t face consequences from criminal charges until you are convicted, which hasn’t happened yet. Or someone is trying to make an example of you ala Kevin Mitnick.
I mean yeah, he’s absurdly rich and greedy but I don’t think he would have gone the route of Bible salesman like that if he wasn’t pinched for funds. Or he would have back when he posed for that photo of him holding the Bible upside down. It’s not a coincidence that the Bible sale started less than 48 hours from the bond being reduced.
He hasn’t been convicted of a crime yet. Until he is, he’s not going to prison. That’s pretty fundamental to how the criminal justice system works. He’s got damages levied against him that he’s going to challenge and probably have reduced some (that’s how it often goes), and had to put up $175M as a bond that will immediately go towards said damages after his appeal.
You’d have to legally revoke his security detail, and even then you probably don’t want to - as a former President he’s a valuable asset because of what he might know despite his seemingly poor retention. As well as the sway he has over his cult. You ideally want to imprison him separate from all other prisoners with his security detail living on site if possible. I’ve said before the easiest way to make that happen is to convert the SHU at a medium-large prison into a sort of “Presidential suite” to house Trump and his security detail. No one else enters or leaves the unit, anything going in or out goes through both prison security and SS security.
It’s a side bonus that it prevents inmates from being thrown in solitary at the same time. And a proper prison is easier to defend from “protesters” than most jails are, and which prison he is sent to should take the possibility of an attack by right wing nutters into consideration.
It does, but only because you have to plan around it happening. Most jails aren’t really set up to deal with that sort of thing, and contempt sends you to jail, not prison. So you have to figure out how to do that without causing a bunch of innocent people to be injured or killed as a consequence. Ideally before you put him in the jail. And where to send the people you’d normally jail there, because he’s going to take up excessive space for the same security-related reasons he will in prison.
Which are all things the judge acknowledged in his statement ashen he handed down the most recent contempt ruling.
Like it or not, there’s a lot more considerations to this than simply “lock him up”.