TIME FOR DON TO HUSH
Stormy case judge expands order to cover his family & DA’s
The judge presiding over the Stormy Daniels hush money case expanded a gag order Monday to prohibit Donald Trump from personally attacking his family members or those of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after prosecutors asked the jurist to bring a stop to the former president’s “dangerous, violent and reprehensible” rhetoric.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan expanded the partial gag order he issued last week — that limited Trump’s public remarks about people connected to his criminal case in Manhattan — after Trump targeted his daughter Loren on Truth Social multiple times over several days, boosting a hoax rumor that she had been trashing him online and was profiting from his rulings at a digital agency that works on campaigns for Democrats.
Merchan rejected arguments by Trump’s lawyers objecting to an expansion of his gag order, which barred Trump from publicly commenting on witnesses and potential witnesses, jurors and potential jurors, prosecutorial staff and their relatives, along with court staff and their families, but not the judge, DA and their relatives.
The judge said Trump’s “pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for defendant’s vitriol.”
Merchan’s evening decision came after prosecutors asked him to expand the gag order for the trial set to begin April 15.
Trump’s “dangerous, violent and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings and is intended to intimidate witnesses and trial participants alike including this court,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote earlier Monday, asking Merchan to expand the order if it doesn’t already include his and Bragg’s relatives.
“This issue is not complicated. Family members of trial participants must be strictly off limits,” Colangelo added. “Defendant’s insistence to the contrary bespeaks a dangerous sense of entitlement to instigate fear and even physical harm to the loved ones of those he sees in the courtroom.”
Framing Trump’s attacks on Merchan’s daughter as “campaign advocacy on issues that bear on his candidacy,” Trump’s lawyers rejected the DA’s reading of the order in their filings Monday and vehemently opposed expanding it. They said they planned to file a new motion seeking Merchan’s recusal. Their last effort failed.
“President Trump’s comments concerning Your Honor’s daughter are, properly understood, a criticism of the court’s prior decision not to recuse itself,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche wrote.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsification of business records in the case alleging he concealed reimbursement to Michael Cohen in 2017 to disguise payments made to Daniels and a Playboy model to buy their silence about alleged sexual trysts.
The targets of Trump’s online diatribes connected to his New York cases have been subjected to a torrent of abuse and threats since he was first indicted. Bomb squads have been called to the courthouses by Foley Square more than once.
Bragg and his office were inundated with as many as 600 threatening emails and calls a day in March 2023 amid his indictment in the hush money case. The office has also dealt with two bogus white powder threats.
In Trump’s civil fraud case, both the judge and his chief law clerk were targeted with death threats and dozens of harassing and antisemitic calls and emails a day after the trial started in October.
Trump’s lawyers and a spokeswoman for Bragg declined to comment.