Donald Trump ally caves and gives up evidence against Trump Organization after being held in contempt of court

Because we’ve all been watching the January 6th Committee’s legal battles over subpoenas, and the courts tend to handle legal battles over congressional subpoenas in such painfully slow fashion, there’s a mistaken tendency to believe that all subpoenas work like this. But in reality, prosecutorial subpoenas tend to work very differently.

We saw this when New York Attorney General Letitia James convinced a judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt for refusing to turn over incriminating documents in her probe into the Trump Organization. Once Trump was held in contempt, he lasted just eleven days before he caved and gave up the documents, just to get out of contempt. If he’d dragged it out any longer, the judge could have decided to massively escalate the fines, and even have Trump hauled in.

Last week, Letitia James also convinced a judge to hold a Trump-allied real estate firm in contempt of court. Sure enough, over the weekend, the firm agreed to provide all of the subpoenaed documents by this Wednesday, and the judge has granted an interim stay accordingly. In other words, when it comes to a prosecutorial subpoena that a judge finds to be valid, there is no stalling.

This should serve as a wake up call to Lindsey Graham, who has now been ordered by a judge to comply with a grand jury subpoena to testify against Donald Trump and others in the Fulton County DA’s criminal probe into election fraud. If Graham thinks he can just not comply, he’ll get to find out what being held in contempt of court really looks like.