"Just Security" is a publication of New York University Law, and one of its publications is titled "Why Trump Will Likely Be Held in Contempt and What Then." It's a long piece, forbiddingly long to do it any real justice here. I do offer its wrap-up, and even that I have bite-sized into safer manageability.
(This Age of Twitter and Instagram and Tik-Tok has inflicted upon me a morbid case of anxiety whenever I contemplate a lengthy post. Don't go there, says the astute Goddess of Internet Reading Modes on my one shoulder, and on the other, Do it Do it! whispers the ever-present Beelzebub trying to throttle even the dwarfish readership I have. Sometimes I give in to temptation and asphyxiate it a bit more; other times I am blessed.)
The five contributors to Just Security's piece are an impressive lot of legal minds, including, for instance, Norman Eisen, whom you'll likely recall as the House Judiciary Committee's special counsel throughout Trump's dozen impeachment proceedings. Conclude the authors:
We expect the court to impose fines against Trump for a substantial number of the violations and to warn him that future violations will result in additional fines and potentially jail time. The most difficult question to answer, however, is whether any finding of contempt and resulting punishment will deter this particular defendant from future violations. Prior history suggests it may. As noted above, as the fines increased together with the risk of incarceration in the civil fraud matter, Trump finally stopped. On the other hand, he may view a short confinement as politically beneficial.... And the amounts of the fines here at issue will not give him pause if he is determined to continue his extrajudicial statements.
I haven't the legal brain of the five contributors, but I too expect fines — that's a given — and then nothing beyond a warning. This strikes me as tantamount to a 1933 judge admonishing John Dillinger for all those disagreeable bank robberies. That judge would have said, and this judge will say, Go with God and sin no more. Whereupon Donald John smiles.
I also agree with the contributors' "on the other hand" — except: not may, he will "view a short confinement as politically beneficial." The only question, I think, is whether this or any judge will view Trump's confinement as tolerably feasible. The American system of justice has so far demonstrated quite vividly that there is law for us and there's law for Trump.
With luck, tremendous amounts of Reason and perhaps some divine intervention, Judge Juan Merchan will view Trump's confinement as necessarily feasible.
Lock him up!