Andy McCarthy: ‘It’d Be Politically Disastrous’ for Dems If Judge Merchan Ordered Trump Be Jailed

CAVUTO: “Juan Merchan now indicating that he’s going to find Donald Trump in contempt for the tenth time. He’s recognizing fairly quickly that when you slap $1,000 fines on a billionaire, you’re not necessarily going to get him to change his ways or his comments or what he says in public or otherwise. But he said — this is the judge now — that he would consider jail for further violations. To that extent, prosecutors have urged him to do so. Will that likely happen? Let’s go to Andy McCarthy on that, former assistant U.S. Attorney, Fox News contributor. That would be a big leap, but what do you think, Andy?”
McCarthy: “Well, I think it’d be politically disastrous for Democrats to have Donald Trump be put in jail over this. I think it would just cause more scrutiny for this case, which is very politicized. I don’t see how that helps them politically. So I think that judge is backing himself into a bad corner by continuing to draw a line in the sand that I think he really doesn’t want to cross with these threats of incarceration.”
CAVUTO: “You’re, the legal eagle, I’m not. As I’ve often told you, I’ve watched a lot of law shows so I think I qualify. But the one thing that struck me, couldn’t to judge make this easier on himself and everybody else if he just said, ‘The standards I’m applying to you, Donald Trump, I will apply now to Michael Cohen?’”
McCarthy: “Well, there’s less law for the proposition that you can — you can stifle a witness than a party, but you’re quite right that there’s what the law exactly says and there’s what the judge could do if the judge really wants. If the judge made it clear to prosecutors that he wants their witness to stop talking about Trump and talking about the case, that would happen quickly. He’s not doing that on the rationalization that Trump is the only one who’s on trial. But the thing is, Neil, what he is saying is that he’s trying to shield the proceedings from heightened publicity and other potential things that could undermine the proceedings. It really does doesn’t matter which participant in the trial is doing the talking, whether it’s Trump or somebody else. That still generates what the judge says he’s trying to shield the jury in the rest of the process from. So I think it’s a disingenuous argument. My own view of it, for what it’s worth, is that he doesn’t, the judge doesn’t want Trump talking about the fact that the judge’s daughter is a political operative for the Democrats who gets a lot of money working for people who define themselves by how much they loathe Trump. I think that’s problematic for the judge and he doesn’t want Trump talking about it, so he’s pretextually saying that Trump is threatening witnesses, which Trump isn’t doing, so that he has an excuse to tamp down that line of argument by Trump.”