Donald Trump calls judge ‘crooked’ after being warned of prison time

Donald Trump briefly returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday, naming the judge who presided over his hush-money trial, a day after he was held in contempt of court and threatened with prison for violating a gag order.

Trump’s comments at events in battleground states Wisconsin and Michigan were closely watched after he was fined $9,000 for making public statements about people involved in the criminal case.

In imposing the fine for posts on Trump’s Truth Social account and campaign website, Judge Juan M. Merchan said that if Trump continued to violate his orders, he would “impose a prison sentence.

There is no crime. I have a corrupt judge. He is a totally contradictory judge, Trump said as he spoke to supporters at an event in Waukesha, Wisconsin, again claiming that these and other cases against him are being funneled by the White House to undermine his campaign.

The gag order prohibits him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others related to his hush money case. Trump is still free to criticize Merchan.

The former president is attempting to pull off a balancing act unprecedented in American history by running for a second term as the presumptive Republican nominee while simultaneously fighting felony charges in New York.

Trump often goes after Merchan, prosecutors and potential witnesses at his rallies and on social media, lines of attack that suit his supporters well but may have put him in further legal jeopardy.

Trump insists he is merely exercising his right to free speech, but the offensive posts have been removed from his Truth Social account and campaign website. Merchan is weighing other alleged violations of the gag order and will hear arguments Thursday.

Trump has often called this case and other criminal cases against him election interference, saying they are preventing him from campaigning in November’s presidential election.

Those present agreed that he is being unfairly prosecuted, and claimed that the trial and the silence order were intended to distract him.

It’s a trial in search of a crime, said Ray Hanson of Hartford. Hanson said he expected Trump’s lawyers to keep him in line so he doesn’t violate the silence order, no matter how much he wants to talk about the trial.

Prosecutors in Manhattan have argued that Trump and his associates participated in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by buying and then burying negative stories. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump’s visits to Wisconsin and Michigan mark his second trip to the swing states in just a month. At previous meetings, the former president focused mainly on immigration, referring to people who are illegally in the US and suspected of crimes as animals.

Meanwhile, Democrats hope to remind voters ahead of these visits of Trump’s position on abortion, which Trump has openly worried would be a political liability for him and Republicans.

Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan met with half a dozen women, including a family doctor, on Wednesday and warned that a second Trump term would threaten abortion rights even in her state, which enshrined those rights in the state constitution after the Supreme Court had destroyed these rights. national rights to the procedure.

Whitmer appeared with the women at a bookstore in Flint, surrounded by signs reading Stop Trump’s Attacks on Health Care and Stop Trump’s Abortion Ban. She told reporters not to believe Trump’s claim in a Time Magazine interview that Republicans would never have enough votes in the U.S. Senate to pass a national abortion ban.

We can’t trust anything Donald Trump says when it comes to abortion. So no one should take any comfort in the fact that he does want an abortion ban, but he won’t get it because he thinks we won’t have 60 votes in the Senate. Nonsense, she said. No one thought we would be here at this moment.

Wisconsin and Michigan are among a handful of battleground states expected to decide the 2024 election.

For Trump to win both states, he will need to do well in suburban areas such as those outside Milwaukee and Saginaw, Michigan, where he will hold events on Wednesday. He underperformed in the suburbs during this year’s primaries even as he dominated the Republican field overall.

Trump has repeatedly falsely said the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump’s losses in battleground states in 2020 have withstood recounts, audits and reviews by the Justice Department and outside observers.

First print: May 02, 2024 | 8:31 am IST