New York City’s Rikers Island is prepared if former President Donald Trump is ordered to serve time in jail amid his unprecedented trial in Manhattan, Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday.
“Our amazing commissioner … is prepared for whatever comes on Rikers Island,” Adams told the media Tuesday when asked if Rikers, New York City’s largest prison, is prepared if Trump is ordered to jail for violating a gag order imposed during the trial.
“I’m pretty sure [the Department of Corrections commissioner] would be prepared to manage and deal with the situation. As you see what’s happening with Harvey Weinstein, we have to just you know, in this business, particularly around law enforcement, we have to adjust whatever comes our way,” he continued.
“We don’t want to deal with a hypothetical, but they’re professionals that will be ready.”
Mayor Eric Adams during a New York State Financial Control Board meeting in New York, on Sept. 6, 2022. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump is currently on trial in Manhattan for 34 counts of falsifying business records. The case stems from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paying former pornographic actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to allegedly quiet her claims of an alleged extramarital affair she had with Trump in 2006. Trump has repeatedly denied the affair and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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Prosecutors allege that the Trump Organization and the president reimbursed Cohen and fraudulently logged the payments as legal expenses. Prosecutors are working to prove that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit or conceal a second crime, which is a felony.
Former President Trump speaks to the press alongside his lawyer Todd Blanche at his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 7, 2024, in New York City. (Win McNamee/Pool via Reuters)
Presiding Judge Juan Merchan has warned Trump he could potentially be ordered to jail if he continues violating a gag order that prevents him from making or directing others to make public statements about witnesses and their potential participation or remarks about court staff, DA staff or family members of staff.
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The district attorney’s office, which is headed up by Democrat Alvin Bragg,argued Trump violated the order a total of 14 times in Truth Social posts and on his campaign’s website. Merchan ruled last Tuesday that Trump violated the order nine times, resulting in a $9,000 fine, and held a hearing last Thursday to consider the remaining alleged gag order violations.
On Monday, Merchan fined the former president another $1,000 for an additional violation, while arguing that it’s “clear” the $1,000 fines for each violation are not effective. He said he would consider a jail sentence for Trump if he continues to violate the gag order.
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Views of the New York City jails on Rikers Island on Dec. 10, 2022, in Queens, New York. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
“The last thing I want to consider is jail,” Merchan said. “You are [the] former president and possibly the next president.”
In the judge’s initial gag order ruling last week, he threatened Trump with jail time if he further violated the order, while also lamenting not being able to fine Trump more than $1,000 for each violation.
Merchan wrote in last week’s order that if Trump carries out “continued willful violations” of the gag order, he could face “incarceratory punishment” if “necessary and appropriate.”
In the text of his order, Merchan lamented that the fines’ costs “unfortunately will not achieve the desired result in those instances where the contemnor can easily afford such a fine.”
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Merchan continued that it would be “preferable” if the court “could impose a fine more commensurate with the wealth of the contemnor.”
“In some cases that might be a $2,500 fine, in other cases it might be a fine of $150,000. Because this Court is not cloaked with such discretion, it must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment,” he said, highlighting again that Trump could face time behind bars if he continues violating the order.
A court sketch depicts former President Trump’s in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on Friday, April 19, 2024. (Christine Cornell)
Trump has railed against the gag order as “unconstitutional” and said Monday afternoon that he’s make the “sacrifice” of jail time to protect the Constitution.
“I have to watch every word I tell you people. You ask me a question, a simple question I’d like to give it, but I can’t talk about it because this judge has given me a gag order and [says] you’ll go to jail if you violate it,” Trump said Monday.
“And frankly, you know what? Our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”
Former President Trump attends his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 7, 2024, in New York City. (Win McNamee/Pool via Reuters)
Fox News reported earlier Tuesday that the Secret Service is holding internal discussions on how to handle a potential jail order for the 45th president. The Secret Service has not publicly weighed in on the report, but allegedly kicked off strategies of handling a potential jail order on Monday.
Rikers Island is located in the Bronx on the East River. It holds about 6,000 inmates, according to city data published last year.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.
