Judge imposes gag order on Trump in Manhattan criminal trial
Ruling comes after April 15 trial date set
NEW YORK — The New York judge presiding over one of Donald Trump’s criminal trials imposed a gag order Tuesday that prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, and jurors, the latest effort to rein in the former president’s wrathful rhetoric about his legal opponents.
The judge, Juan Manuel Merchan, imposed the order at the request of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the case against Trump. The district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has accused
Trump of falsifying records relating to a nondisclosure agreement he had made during his 2016 presidential campaign.
The ruling comes on the heels of Merchan’s setting an April 15 trial date, rejecting Trump’s latest effort to delay the proceeding while he seeks to reclaim the White House. It will mark the first prosecution of a former American president, and it might be the only one of Trump’s criminal cases to go to trial before voters head to the polls in November.
Under the judge’s order, Trump cannot make, or direct others to make, statements about witnesses’ roles in the case. Trump is also barred from commenting on prosecutors, court staff, and their relatives if he intends to interfere with their work on the case. Any comments whatsoever about jurors are banned as well, the judge ruled, citing an array of hostile remarks Trump has made about grand jurors, prosecutors, and others.
“His statements were threatening, inflammatory, denigrating,” Merchan wrote in the Tuesday order.
There is one notable exception to the gag order: Trump is not prohibited from attacking
Bragg, who has allegedly received numerous death threats in recent months.
Although Merchan did not specify how he might enforce the narrowly tailored order, judges typically impose fines. In extraordinary circumstances, they can send someone to jail, although that seems unlikely in this case.
The gag order, along with Merchan’s other recent ruling protecting the identities of potential jurors in the case, reflects the volatile atmosphere that has swirled around Trump’s four criminal cases and several civil trials.
In seeking the order last month, Bragg’s prosecutors highlighted Trump’s “longstanding history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him” — comments that the judge seized on in his ruling.
Trump, for example, has taken aim at Michael Cohen, his onetime fixer and one of Bragg’s central witnesses, calling him a “liar” and a “rat.” And in a post on his social media site Tuesday, Trump made an ominous reference to Cohen, claiming that his former fixer was “death.” He also referred to one of Bragg’s prosecutors in pejorative terms.
Both comments would now arguably violate the gag order. On Tuesday, Cohen issued a statement thanking the judge for issuing the order.
In another post, Trump took aim at Merchan and his family, claiming that the judge “hates me,” although those comments do not appear to cross the line the judge has now set.