A judge on Tuesday imposed limited silence on Donald Trump before his criminal trial in New York.
Trump’s statements about various figures involved in the case “were threatening, inflammatory (and) disparaging,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said in a court order.
“Such inflammatory statements undoubtedly risk obstructing the orderly administration of this Court,” Merchan ruled.
The silence order prohibits Trump from making public statements about likely witnesses and jurors in the case.
He must also refrain from speaking about attorneys involved in the case, court staff, employees of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and their family members if such statements are made with “the intent to interfere materially” with the matter.
Merchan’s order still allows Trump to speak out about Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who is prosecuting the former president for falsifying business records to conceal a secret payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The silence does not specifically prohibit Trump from criticizing the judge.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to NBC News that the silence prevents the presumptive Republican presidential nominee “from engaging in fundamental political discourse, which is entitled to the highest level of protection under the First Amendment.”
The decision by Merchan, who granted a Feb. 22 request from Bragg to restrict Trump’s speech on the case, came hours after Trump criticized the judge as a “Trump Hater” on social media social.
Trump, in several Truth Social posts, called on Merchan to recuse himself from the case and dragged the judge’s daughter into his attacks by highlighting her work for a Democratic consulting firm.
The shooting of Merchan came a day after the judge scheduled the trial to begin on April 15, rejecting a proposal from Trump’s lawyers to delay it further.
Trump, who was in court when Merchan made the ruling, said in a subsequent news conference that he would be willing to testify at trial.
Merchan’s order of silence issued Tuesday afternoon appears to refer to Trump’s remarks about his daughter.
He highlighted “the nature and impact of the statements made against this Court and a member of its family,” as well as Trump’s remarks about witnesses such as Michael Cohen, his former lawyer who is scheduled to testify at the trial.
“Given that the eve of trial is upon us, there is no doubt that the imminence of the risk of harm is now paramount,” the judge wrote.
Merchan also noted in a footnote that Trump targeted a prosecutor in the case “within hours” after the trial date was set for April 15.
Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, declined a request for comment.
Trump is already bound by a gag order in a separate criminal case in federal court in Washington, D.C., where he is accused of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. In December, a federal appeals court upheld Trump’s challenge to the silence order but narrowed it to allow him to speak about his prosecutor, special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump was also under a silence order in his civil fraud case, in which he was found liable for fraudulently inflating the value of his assets in his business records for financial gain.
Bragg, in his own request for a silence order in late February, noted that Trump had “a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks toward participants in various legal proceedings against him, including jurors, witnesses, attorneys and court staff.
Trump’s lawyers responded that it would be “unconstitutional and unlawful to impose a prior restraint” on the leading presidential candidate’s First Amendment-protected speech.
Instead, they said they would continue to abide by a judge’s warning at the start of the case, warning Trump not to make statements that could harm the trial process.
But Merchan, in Tuesday’s order, said he was “not convinced” by the proposal.
cnbc
