Judges are now pummeling Donald Trump from all sides
Over the years, Donald Trump’s only experience with the courts has been in civil disputes where he had the upper hand going in, and constitutional disputes over his executive orders while he was in office. But now that he’s a defendant in criminal cases headed to trial, and caught up in civil trials he can’t win, Trump is finding out the hard way that it’s a very different position to be in.
Trump either thought he could help himself, or thought he could get away with blowing off steam, by posting unhinged and disprovably false claims about E. Jean Carroll on social media on Wednesday morning. But in almost real time, these posts were presented to the judge in the case, who announced that if Trump keeps it up he’ll face penalties that could go as far as obstruction of justice charges. It’s difficult to even find a way to screw up so badly that the judge in your case is floating the prospect of criminal penalties against you in a civil trial. But that was only the half of it.
Elsewhere the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s attempt at blocking Mike Pence from testifying against him to Jack Smith’s DOJ grand jury. That means Pence will testify very soon. If Trump thought he was going to get any special consideration or any magical “run out the clock” privileges from the the appeals court judges, just because he used to hold the office of the presidency, he’s now finding out that nothing works that way.
Donald Trump is now getting pummeled by multiple judges in multiple ways. We’ll see if Trump will be able to refrain from making more social media posts about the E. Jean Carroll trial. The only reason Trump hasn’t heard from the judge in his Manhattan criminal trial in awhile is that he’s backed off from making social media posts about the case. If Trump goes back to making that mistake, that judge will suddenly insert himself back into Trump’s life as well.
The bottom line is that, as tends to be the case with anyone whose life becomes defined entirely by his status as a defendant in too many cases and trials to list, Donald Trump is now owned by the judges in his life. There’s nothing he can do to stop these various criminal and civil trials from ripping his life to pieces. And if he keeps antagonizing these judges, he’ll just be accelerating his own downfall.
