New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city’s notorious Rikers Island prison will be "ready" to receive former President Donald Trump should he be ordered to serve jail time for violating a gag order imposed by the judge presiding over his paperwork trial in Manhattan.
Adams, a Democrat, said the city’s Corrections Department "is prepared for whatever comes on Rikers Island," and said the facility has experience with well-known individuals from the incarceration of disgraced former movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
"We have to adjust, you know — in this business, particularly around law enforcement, we have to adjust whatever comes our way," he said at a press conference on Tuesday, according to The Hill. "But we don’t want to deal with a hypothetical. They’re professionals, they’ll be ready."
Judge Juan Merchan has found Trump in violation of the gag order on his speech 10 times in the ongoing trial, with the judge threatening the former president with jail time if he continues to discuss details of the case or verbally attack witnesses or other court figures publicly.
Trump has been fined $10,000 for the gag order violations in the case, which centers on whether he falsified business records to conceal an alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
On Monday, Merchan told Trump the "last thing I want to do is put you in jail," but "at the end of the day, I have a job to do."
"Your continued violations constitute a direct attack on the rule of law," the judge said.
Prosecutors maintain they are not looking to put Trump behind bars for the violations of the gag order.
Trump has chafed under Merchan’s order, claiming it violates his First Amendment rights to respond to political attacks.
"It is hard to sit back and listen to lies and false statements be made against you knowing that if you respond, even in the most modest fashion, you are told by a Corrupt and Highly Conflicted Judge that you will be PUT IN PRISON, maybe for a long period of time," the former president posted on his Truth Social page early Wednesday.
He added that it is a "really bad feeling to have your Constitutional Right to Free Speech, such a big part of life in our Country, so unfairly taken from you, especially when all of the sleazebags, lowlifes, and grifters that you oppose are allowed to say absolutely anything that they want."
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee is the first former president to stand trial criminally.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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