Mary Trump Predicts How Donald Trump Would Handle Going to Jail

Mary Trump, Donald Trump's estranged niece, told MSNBC Reports during an interview appearance on Saturday that she doesn't think the former president "could handle" going to jail amid his criminal hush money trial.

"I think it's absurd for anybody to think he would willingly go into jail even for a night, even for an afternoon," Mary Trump, a critic of her uncle, said. "Hopefully, if he ever is sent to jail for breaking the gag order...it's for real, it's not that he is going to some suite in some fancy hotel that's just guarded. He is there in a cell without his phone just like any other American would be. He would come out a changed man. I don't think he could handle it."

She added: "He would love the martyrdom, but I don't believe for a second that he is willing to go to jail for real. No way."

Newsweek reached out to Mary Trump and Trump's political adviser for comment via email.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, became the first former president in U.S. history to stand trial in a criminal case last month. Following an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, Trump was indicted in March 2023 on charges of falsifying business records relating to hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels by Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels had alleged she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts and said the case against him is politically motivated. He faces a total of four criminal cases.

In March, Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case, imposed a gag order on Trump, barring him from making public statements about witnesses, including Cohen, Bragg's star witness, and Daniels, as well as lawyers and staff in the case and their families. The order excluded Merchan and Bragg, but it was later expanded to include Merchan's and Bragg's families after the former president made attacks toward the judge's daughter, Loren Merchan.

Trump has already been fined $9,000 for breaking the gag order nine separate times last week and was fined another $1,000 on Monday as the judge warned Trump that future gag order violations could send him to jail.

As legal analyst Aron Solomon wrote for Newsweek earlier in May, the gag order only applies to Trump and not witnesses because "there is only one criminal defendant and that is Donald Trump."

Following the conclusion of court proceedings on Friday, Trump told the media outside the courtroom, "If anything is mentioned against certain people, and you know who they are, certain people, anything's even mentioned, he [Judge Merchan] wants to put me in jail.

"And that could happen one day. And I'd be very proud to go to jail for our Constitution," he said about breaking the gag order. His comments come ahead of Cohen's expected testimony on Monday.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote about the gag order on Truth Social, his social media platform, "It is a really bad feeling to have your Constitutional Right to Free Speech, such a big part of life in our Country, so unfairly taken from you, especially when all of the sleazebags, lowlifes, and grifters that you oppose are allowed to say absolutely anything that they want."

He continued: "It is hard to sit back and listen to lies and false statements be made against you knowing that if you respond, even in the most modest fashion, you are told by a Corrupt and Highly Conflicted Judge that you will be PUT IN PRISON, maybe for a long period of time."