Facing a recently renewed threat of imprisonment if he’s again found in contempt in the context of a gag order from Judge Juan Merchan in a New York City criminal case, former President Donald Trump “meekly and quickly” deleted a social media rant on Tuesday that targeted an expected witness, though he didn’t name them.
That description came from Ron Filipkowski, a former prosecutor-turned-media figure. Reports suggested that the witness about whom Trump was so furious would be Stormy Daniels, a woman who allegedly had an affair with the ex-president and whose pre-2016 election hush money connected to those circumstances helped spur the present case.
“This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare,” Trump claimed in his original rant.
“Fake tough guy Trump went from pledging to defy the judge’s order when leaving court yesterday to stand up for his rights to meekly and quickly deleting social media posts after getting a call from his lawyer this morning,” Filipkowski posited on X, formerly Twitter.
The case against Trump accuses him of falsifying business records of repayments to Michael Cohen, a former ally to Trump who provided Daniels the money. (Cohen himself’s expected to testify.) Prosecutors are also alleging an ambition of targeting the 2016 presidential election in a manner favorable to Trump, an idea bolstered by — among other developments — recent testimony from longtime Trump confidante Hope Hicks about the de facto state of emergency in Trump’s circles around that time, when news reports were focusing on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that implicated the ex-president.
Hicks also said that she didn’t believe past attempts by Trump to push blame for the hush money arrangements to Cohen, who, the idea is, was acting at Trump’s behest rather than coming up with the deal on his own.
