Judge muzzles Trump
Stormy case order to nix rants vs. judge’s staff, DA, witnesses
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday barred Donald Trump from publicly attacking some of his favorite targets — including Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels — ahead of next month’s hush money trial, finding his caustic diatribes against his enemies go “far beyond defending himself.”
Granting the Manhattan district attorney’s request for a limited gag order restricting Trump’s public statements, state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan prohibited him from making or directing anyone else to make comments about known or possible witnesses, prosecutors handling the case, and the DA and Merchan’s staff and their families.
Prosecutors had pointed to Trump’s lengthy history of verbal onslaughts and their often violent undertones, making mention of one Truth Social post depicting him “holding a baseball bat and wielding it at the back of the district attorney’s head.”
Merchan, who, like DA Alvin Bragg and officials on Trump’s other cases has been inundated with death threats and racist correspondence since Trump was first indicted, rejected the ex-president’s framing that as a leading political candidate, he has justly defended himself against criticisms levied by public figures.
“Indeed, his statements were threatening, inflammatory, denigrating, and the targets of his statements ranged from local and federal officials, court and court staff, prosecutors and staff assigned to the cases, and private individuals including grand jurors performing their civic duty,” the judge wrote.
“The consequences of those statements included not only fear on the part of the individual targeted, but also the assignment of increased security resources to investigate threats and protect the individuals and family members thereof.”
Rejecting Trump’s claims that the DA had no basis to take issue with his remarks about line prosecutors because they were made a year ago, Merchan referenced Trump’s comments at a press conference Monday berating one of them as a “radical left” handpicked by “Biden and his thugs.”
Merchan’s order also prevents Trump from commenting on jurors or prospective jurors, whose identities he previously ruled would be anonymous to the public and whose addresses would remain unknown to Trump. He said jury selection would begin on April 15 after rejecting Trump’s latest bid to delay the trial at a hearing on Monday.
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, and a spokeswoman for Bragg declined to comment.
Merchan’s order does not prevent Trump from publicly remarking on him or his relatives, whom he has gone after online repeatedly and as recently as Tuesday morning, oddly complimenting the judge’s looks before launching into a tirade spewing conspiracies about his daughter.
“Judge Juan Merchan, a very distinguished looking man, is nevertheless a true and certified Trump Hater who suffers from a very serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In other words, he hates me! His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The judge, however, made clear those attacks were on his radar, referencing Trump’s comments about him “and a family member thereof.”
Trump is also under a gag order in his D.C. election subversion case and was placed under one on the second day of his civil fraud trial after disparaging the judge’s chief clerk. He violated the latter twice, resulting in $15,000 in fines.
The 77-year-old Trump, facing four criminal matters, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in his Manhattan case, alleging he concealed checks to Cohen to disguise that they came as reimbursement for paying off Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual tryst to secure his 2016 presidential win.
The Republican frontrunner in this year’s election on Tuesday launched what could be his last legally permitted insults against Cohen, calling the upcoming trial’s anticipated star witness “a convicted LIAR and FELON,” and writing that he was “death” for the case.
Cohen, a longtime Trump loyalist before turning on him when he was federally convicted for his role in the hush-money scheme in 2018, welcomed Merchan’s ruling, noting he’d “been under relentless assault from Donald’s MAGA supporters.”
But Cohen said he nevertheless wasn’t confident his former boss would abide by it.
“Knowing Donald as well as I do, he will seek to defy the gag order by employing others within his circle to do his bidding, regardless of consequence.”