jury selection to cameras in the court. now, he is familiar with donald trump, recently presiding over the successful tax fraud prosecution of the trump organization and its former cfo, allen weisselberg. joining me now, former manhattan district attorney, daniel horowitz, and criminal defense attorney and msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos in studio with me daniel, you know this judge personally, what are your expectations for how he will handle the case? he s a very very experienced judge. he s been on the bench for a long time. he sat in manhattan and in manhattan, you encounter defendants of every stripe he s very experienced, and he had a bit of a preview about what he might be in store for during the weisselberg, the trump organization trial last year so he s there, he s even handed. he is generally mild tempered, but he s somebody who is going to rule the courtroom with an
iron fist while wearing a linen glove. and to the extent that we ve heard questions about what happens in the courtroom and the kinds of things that i think people might be fearful of, i think one of the things you have to realize is he s a very very experienced judge. and i think to the extent that there are things that whether the lawyers or the former president tries, they ll learn very quickly that in his courtroom, judge merchan is the king in terms of the motions he has, he s thoughtful, he s deliberative and he will give each side, he will give both the prosecution and the defense a fair opportunity to present their case, whether that s in motions, motions to dismiss, or motions for discovery or at a trial. he s really very well suited, i think, to hear this particular matter, and it s not, again, just simply because he had an experience handling the trump
specifics, but he did indicate the trial team responsible for the successful guilty verdic for the trump organization trial, that also involved alle vital berg that is the trial team that is leading thi investigation and any of the cases that are involving donal trump at the new york da s office again, will there be a requirement there was separate grand jury that actually had to sit to entertain those particular charges? those being the overinflatio of assets, the insurance fraud et cetera? or could this particular grand jury that s been hearing all this testimony concernin stormy daniels, quebec ran jur returned recommendations for crimes that were perhaps anticipated that don t hav anything to do with stormy daniels? in theory, that s possibl though, it would be strange to present two separate grand juries so, that is a possibility, but in all likelihood, let s tal just for a minute about th other prosecution yo mentioned. allen weisselberg. in respect, i m not sure that a victor
states secret service, could b enough, based upon what he s done this morning, do you thin it s possible that we could se donald trump, perhaps, hav walked himself into a gag order? not normal in a lot of cases as you and i both know, however, we have seen it happen in othe high profile cases roger stone had one in his trial a few years ago. we do think maybe a gag orde could be in place to prevent donald trump from being able t send out messages like he just did. okay, ultimately, that is going to be up to th discretion of the judge. it s important that yo misunderstand that we di enough cash bail, particularly when it comes to nonviolen felonies of the sorts. the idea of him being all right, or as he, said released as ora recognizance, it s relativel high in terms of a gag order, i d think it is likely that we could see some specialized individualized or customized instructions given by whoeve the iranian judges in this matter, because i do think tha the implications of what could
cooperative, i m keeping an eye on him if he at some point, the pressure on other charges is great enough that he decides that he s going to talk. i have no insight into that but sometimes one day that decision is just made it s too much and the threat of, you know, additional charges against him he s willing, what he knows about he s willing to talk to them. the role of the two witnesses in the times story play. witnesses in the trump organization trial where the guilty verdict came back, so they had a star turn in there. in front of grand jury multiple times for that. i imagine with both, particularly jeff, he ll know about the accounting and how it worked and allen weisselberg