Former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post depicting President Joe Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck may violate his bail conditions, according to former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“A standard condition of being out on bail applies in New York and in the D.C. federal case and in the Georgia state case: that you not commit a crime while you are out on bail,” Weissmann told MSNBC on Sunday.
“Threatening the president of the United States is a crime, so the question would be the legal and factual question whether what he has engaged in with respect to posting the image of Joe Biden bound and gagged with what appears to be a bullet hole in his head constitutes that kind of threat,” said Weissmann, a law professor at New York University.
If it is determined that the post constitutes a threat, bail could be repealed and Trump could be remanded into custody, he explained.
Longtime Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe stressed that “under existing law it’s unclear whether posting on Truth Social a picture of POTUS tied up and shot in the head in a moving truck under the present circumstances amounts to a true threat under Sec. 871.”
“But no question it warrants an FBI visit and a warning,” he added.
In all seriousness, under existing law it’s unclear whether posting on Truth Social a picture of POTUS tied up and shot in the head in a moving truck under the present circumstances amounts to a true threat under Sec. 871. But no question it warrants an FBI visit and a warning. https://t.co/h06hnzfS8J
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) April 1, 2024