Trump gag tightens as he attacks judiciary
What happened
The judge in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial expanded a gag order on the former president this week after a torrent of attacks by Trump against his daughter—the latest in the former president’s attempts to discredit the judicial system. The new order bars Trump from going after Justice Juan Merchan’s family members or relatives of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, building on last week’s order against attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, court staff, and their relatives. Trump falsely accused Merchan’s daughter, Loren—a political consultant who’s worked with Democrats—of posting an image of him behind bars on social media. He shared photos of her on Truth Social and called her “a Rabid Trump Hater.” Trump also called Merchan “totally compromised” while complaining about “crooked” and “corrupt” judges. Hours after Merchan expanded the order, Trump posted a video of Fox News commentators criticizing Loren.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, in a trial set to begin on April 15. He faces additional charges of mishandling classified documents in Florida, but no trial date has been set, and federal prosecutors have accused Judge Aileen Cannon of causing delays and pushed her to speed up the process. Republican-appointed U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton condemned Trump’s comments as attacks on the rule of law—an extraordinary public statement from a sitting federal judge. “If we don’t have a viable court system that’s able to function efficiently,” he said, “then we have tyranny.”
What the columnists said
“It’s difficult to think of a more combustible mixture than Trump and a gag order,” said Aaron Blake in The Washington Post. Trump’s attacks have put so much “strain” on the legal system that judges are struggling to find a response. Merchan has even threatened to withhold the names of jurors from Trump’s legal team lest he “threaten the safety and integrity of the jury.” This “face-off” carries “increasingly profound implications” for a judicial system tasked with holding Trump accountable but “taking a beating as judges try to figure out” how.
Trump “is an exhausting, undisciplined, solipsistic drama queen,” said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. But that doesn’t mean he “doesn’t have a point.” This case was brought by a prosecutor who “treats hardened criminals with kid gloves” yet manages to take a misdemeanor business records charge and “parse it into 34 felonies.” Merchan, too, is a product of New York’s Democratic machine. In New York, however, “being an anti-Trump partisan is not a disqualification; it’s a credential.”
Trump has “routinely targeted judges,” said Timothy L. O’Brien in Bloomberg. He maintains he’s “merely exercising his First Amendment right,” but “free speech doesn’t protect calls for violence.” He posted a video of a hog-tied President Biden last week, and the Secret Service should “ask what he intended” with that threatening clip, “as they would with any other citizen.” As Trump continues stoking “the passions of his most ardent acolytes,” we must “avoid normalizing” his behavior “as nothing more than Trump being Trump.”