New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) said Wednesday the city’s infamous Rikers Island prison will be “ready” for former President Trump if he is ordered to jail over violating a gag order in his criminal hush money trial.
Adams said the city’s Department of Corrections “is prepared for whatever comes on Rikers Island,” comparing the potential of holding an important person like Trump to experience with movie producer and sex criminal 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. “But we don’t want to deal with a hypothetical. They’re professionals, they’ll be ready.”
Trump has been found in violation of a strict gag order on his speech in the criminal case ten times over two hearings, with Judge Juan Merchan threatening Trump with jail time if he continues to discuss details or make disparaging remarks about witnesses and other court figures in public comments.
The former president has already been fined $10,000 for the violations in the case, where he stands accused of falsifying business documents to cover up an alleged past affair in the weeks before the 2016 election.
The judge told Trump on Monday that “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,” Merchan said.
Prosecutors said they do not seek to put Trump behind bars for the violations.
Trump has harshly criticized the gag order, asserting they violate his First Amendment rights to respond to political attacks, as the presumptive Republican nominee becomes the first former U.S. president to face criminal trial.
