The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial in New York extended a partial gag order Monday night following the former president’s online attacks on his daughter.
Judge Juan Mercan said Trump is barred from attacking his own family members and those of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, except for witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and their relatives whom he was ordered to “refrain from » to speak in a previous gag. order issued last week.
Trump’s pattern of attacking members of the president’s legal family and the lawyers assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose. fair play to the defendant’s vitriol,” Merchan said Monday. “It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable possibility that there is a threat to the integrity of the judicial process. ‘The threat is very real.’
Trump’s lawyers argued in a filing Monday that his repeated attacks on the daughter were protected political speech, while Manhattan prosecutors urged a judge to suppress the former president’s escalating rhetoric.
Bragg’s office argued that Trump’s attack on Merchan’s daughter on social media “fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings and is intended to intimidate witnesses and trial participants.”
The filing from Trump’s lawyers said the presumptive GOP nominee was not trying to interfere with the trial or “cause harm to anyone,” but indicated he was indeed trying to pressure the judge.
“President Trump’s comments regarding His Majesty’s daughter are, properly understood, a criticism of the Court’s earlier decision not to recuse himself,” the filing said. Trump last year asked Merchan to step down from the case.
“President Trump’s social media posts have strengthened the defense’s arguments about the need for relief that have been and will continue to be the subject of a practical motion,” the filing added.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chung argued in a statement Monday night that Merchan is “clearly conflicted” over his daughter and “needs to do the right thing and step down immediately.”
Merchan’s August 2023 decision refusing to recuse noted that he had sought guidance from the New York court system’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics regarding his daughter’s employment. The panel found that the DA’s case “does not involve either the judge’s relative or the relative’s business, either directly or indirectly. They are not parties or potential witnesses in the matter, and none of the parties or counsel before the judge are clients of the business We see nothing in the investigation to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business or any of their interests.”
Merchan’s daughter has served as president of Authentic Campaigns, a company that Vice President Kamala Harris used for digital fundraising and advertising during her presidential campaign. The company describes itself as “a digital agency that progressives can trust to get the job done right.”
Bragg’s office argued that “Trump’s assertion of the constitutional right to make personal attacks on family members is both troubling and wrong.”
“This issue is not complicated. Family members of litigants should be strictly off limits. Defendant’s insistence to the contrary testifies to a dangerous sense of entitlement to incite fear and even physical harm to the loved ones of those he sees in room.” the DA’s filing said.
The back-and-forth comes after Merchan slapped Trump with one partial gag order last week barring him from flying witnesses, court staff and their families. The order did not name the judge or the judge’s family.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly taken shots at the Internet Merchan and his daughter.
“Maybe the judge is so hateful because his daughter is making money working to get Trump,” one of Trump’s Truth Social posts said. She used her name in a separate post and another linked to an article with photos of the daughter.
Another post accused the daughter of using a photo of Trump behind bars as her X profile picture on an account Al Baker, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Court Administration, said was it’s actually not the daughter’s. Baker said recently that someone was apparently recreating a version of his daughter’s closed account last year, which he called a “manipulation of an account that she had abandoned a long time ago.”
The DA said in Monday’s filing that Trump’s attacks were based on “palpable falsehoods” but that “the facts are beside the point for this defendant.”
“There is no constitutional right to target this Court’s family, let alone with the blatant lies that served as the flimsiest pretexts for the defendant’s attacks. The defendant knows what he’s doing, as does everyone else,” Bragg’s office argued. .
Prosecutors asked the judge clarify that the order does extend to his daughter and he said he would have to extend the order if he didn’t. They also urged the judge to warn Trump that “any constitutional right he may have to access the names of jurors will be forfeited by continued harassment or disruptive conduct.” The DA’s office previously argued that the judge could find Trump in criminal contempt for willfully disobeying a court order, which could include up to 30 days in jail. if he “continues to disregard such orders.”
Trump’s lawyers said in their filing that Merchan should deny the request to extend the gag order, which they called “an unlawful prior restraint that improperly limits the presumptive Republican nominee and primary candidate’s campaign defense.” elections of 2024″.
The filing did not acknowledge the apparent social media prank involving Merchan’s daughter, and instead faulted the judge for Baker’s statement, suggesting it was inappropriate and amounted to the judge “weighing in.”
He also accused the judge who spoke to the Associated Press about a Profile news agency published last month, saying he violated the state’s code of judicial conduct by commenting on the case. “According to reports of the interview, His Holiness stated that the Court ‘wouldn’t talk about the case,’ but did so anyway,” the filing said, noting his remarks that “There is no agenda here. . . . We want to follow the law. We want justice to be served.”
Trump’s lawyers also complained that Merchan sat in on the interview while the former president waited to hear whether the judge would allow him to file a motion to delay the trial because of pretrial publicity.
The filing was released Monday. In it, Trump’s lawyers argued that “extremely prejudicial pretrial publicity, which is substantial, ongoing and likely to increase” will prevent him from a fair trial in the case, which alleges he falsified business records related to a hush-hush payment. His then-lawyer Michael Cohen spoke with adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels claims she had sex with Trump, which he denies.
The filing states that both Cohen and Daniels contributed to the damaging publicity by repeatedly criticizing Trump in often figurative terms, despite the DA’s office asking them not to talk about the case. Trump is asking for an indefinite postponement of the trial “until the damaging press coverage subsides.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him in the case.