Trump lashes out at judge after gag order in N.Y. case
Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his April 15 hush-money criminal trial, suggesting without evidence that the veteran jurist was kowtowing to his daughter’s interests as a Democratic political consultant.
The former president objected in particular to what he said was her specious social media photo showing him behind bars.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, posted on social media that the gag order issued Tuesday was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional.” He said Judge Juan M. Merchan was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals and urged him to step aside from the case.
The gag order, which was requested by the prosecution, bars Trump from either making or directing other people to make public statements on his behalf about jurors and potential witnesses in the hushmoney trial, such as his lawyer turned nemesis Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels. It also prohibits any statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.
It does not bar comments about Merchan or his family, nor does it prohibit criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat whose office is prosecuting Trump.
Merchan’s daughter, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats, “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump’ ” and recently posted a fake photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him behind bars, Trump said. He argued those circumstances make it “completely impossible for me to get a fair trial.”
An account appearing to belong to Loren Merchan on X showed a photo illustration of an imprisoned Trump as its profile picture Wednesday morning. It was later changed.
“Maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes mon
Trump’s Truth Social post was his first reaction to the gag order. His focus on Merchan’s daughter and her ties to Democratic politics echoed his lawyers’ arguments last year when they urged the judge to exit the case.
Merchan said then that a state court ethics panel found that Loren Merchan’s work had no bearing on his impartiality. The judge said in a ruling last September that he was certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial” and that Trump’s lawyers had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.”
In a recent interview, Merchan told the Associated Press, that he and his staff were working diligently to prepare for the historic first trial of a former president.
Trump’s hush-money case, set to be the first of his four criminal cases to go to trial, centers on allegations that he falsely logged payments to Cohen as legal fees in his company’s books when they were for Cohen’s work during the 2016 campaign covering up negative stories about Trump. That included $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels on Trump’s behalf so she wouldn’t publicize her claim of a sexual encounter with him years earlier.
Trump pleaded not guilty last April.