Felon Trump Drives Up Jail Time Odds With Every Word

The day after Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, he rushed to Trump Tower to hold a press conference proclaiming his innocence. But in doing so, he also immediately violated his gag order.

In a 30-minute speech on Friday, Trump slammed his former fixer Michael Cohen as slimy and untrustworthy.

“Again, if I wrote down and paid a lawyer—and by the way, this was a highly qualified lawyer. Now, I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order,” Trump said. “But, you know, he’s a sleazebag.”

“Everybody knows that,” he continued. “Took me a while to find out, but he was effective. He did work.”

Trump’s gag order—which has not yet been lifted—bars him from publicly attacking the court staff, witnesses, or jurors involved in the case. And he’s already been hit with repercussions for previous transgressions. Earlier this month, Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump would have to pay $10,000—the maximum penalty of $1,000 per violation—for continually breaking the order.

But that ruling came with an added threat that is still on the table. Since the court could not craft an “appropriate” financial penalty for a deep-pocketed defendant like Trump, Merchan wrote that, in order to “protect the dignity of the judicial system and to compel respect for its mandates,” the court “must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment.”

Trump is due to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention. And his words could come back to haunt him in that hearing: In criminal cases, judges often consider a defendant’s level of remorse (or lack thereof) when deciding a sentence.

Meanwhile, Cohen responded Friday in real time, posting on X that “Trump’s press conference was nothing shy of a batshit crazy avalanche of broken brain word manure,” while tagging his nickname for his former boss: “#VonShitzInPantz.”