The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, stated this Tuesday that the Rikers Island prison is prepared to receive Donald Trump if the former US president is sentenced to prison for violating the “gag order” he faces in his trial. prison in Manhattan.
Adams also referred to his “incredible commissioner” at the New York Department of Corrections, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, and her team, who he said will be ready if the time comes.
“They will be prepared to deal with the situation, as is already happening with Harvey Weinstein (transferred to Rikers in the last few hours). When it comes to applying the law, we have to adapt to whatever comes,” Adams said in a press conference after being asked about the alleged case of the former president being sent to prison.
Within the framework of the criminal trial against Trump in New York, in which he is accused of falsifying accounting records to buy the silence of the porn actress Stormy Daniels - with whom he would have had an "affair" - and thus protect his campaign from In 2016, Judge Juan Merchan fined the politician twice for violating the “gag order” and warned him about the possibility of imprisoning him.
The judge in charge sanctioned him again this Monday with a thousand dollars for contempt, since the former president has continued to publicly accuse those involved in the process opened in New York, despite being prohibited from doing so.
“The last thing I want is to put him in jail. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well, but I have a job to do and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system,” the judge told him yesterday.
In fact, the judge already fined Trump $9,000 last week, considering punishable several public statements on his social network, Truth Social, and on his campaign website, in which he attacked some of the witnesses.
If he enters prison, he would become the first former president behind bars, as he is already the first criminally accused, facing 88 criminal charges for various legal proceedings opened in courts in several cities and for different crimes.
“This judge has put a gag order on me and said that I will go to jail if I violate it, but our Constitution is much more important than jail. “I will make that sacrifice,” Trump said after leaving court on Monday.
On the other hand, Adams' comment about Weinstein is due to the fact that the former film producer is currently in Rikers Island prison after having previously been in a prison in upstate New York, and after having spent time in a prison hospital unit in this same city.
Weinstein remains awaiting a retrial in New York after an appeals court overturned his historic 2020 conviction for sex crimes that sparked the #MeToo movement.