VANITY FAIR
Former President Donald Trump practically dared New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan to jail him for violating a gag order in his upcoming hush-money case, claiming on Saturday that time behind bars would be a “great honor” and comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail as a political prisoner.
“If this Partisan Hack wants to put me in the ‘clink’ for speaking the open and obvious TRUTH,” Trump wrote on Truth Social of Merchan, “I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela – It will be my GREAT HONOR.”
His martyrdom reference was the second time in six months that Trump cast himself in the mold of Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first president of post-apartheid South Africa. In October of last year, Trump told supporters that he didn’t “mind being Nelson Mandela, because I’m doing it for a reason.”
Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s trial on 34 counts of falsifying business documents in New York, initially slapped Trump with a limited gag order in late March, citing the presumptive GOP nominee’s “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” comments about individuals involved in his legal cases. Merchan’s initial order only kept Trump from speaking about witnesses, jurors, court staff, and attorneys (and their families) in the case, and made no mention of the judge’s family.
But after Trump called Merchan’s daughter, who has worked for a consulting firm with ties to some top Democrats, a “Rabid Trump Hater” and shared false claims about her social media activity, prosecutors asked the judge to clarify and expand the order. He granted the request last Monday, prohibiting Trump from going after both his family and the family of New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is overseeing the prosecution.
