Trump asks judge in NY hush money case to free him from gag order post-conviction – citing this month’s presidential debate
Donald Trump on Tuesday urged the judge who oversaw his Manhattan hush money trial to remove a court order barring him from bashing witnesses or jurors in the criminal case — citing time for this month’s presidential debate.
A lawyer for the 77-year-old presumptive 2024 Republican nominee — and as of last week, a convicted felon — sent a letter to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan citing Trump’s June 27 debate with President Biden among several reasons to lift the limited “gag order.”
The court’s reasons for imposing the order — protecting the “integrity” of the trial and preventing “prejudice” among jurors — are moot now that the trial is over, Trump attorney Todd Blanche wrote.
“Now that the trial is concluded, the concerns articulated by the government and the Court do not justify continued restrictions on the First Amendment rights of President Trump — who remains the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election,” Blanche wrote in the letter.
“The constitutional mandate for unrestrained campaign advocacy by President Trump is even stronger in light of” Biden’s public comments about the verdict, the upcoming presidential debate, and other factors, Blanche wrote.
The limited gag order signed by Merchan in March stopped Trump from speaking about trial witnesses like his ex-fixer Michael Cohen and the porn star Stormy Daniels, who have both commented on the case after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of illegally fudging documents to cover up a plot to hide sex scandals from voters before the 2016 election.
The former president was also barred from ripping individual prosecutors on the case, plus Merchan’s family and the family of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. But it’s a limited gag order, rather than a total gag order stopping him from commenting on the case entirely.
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Trump has still been allowed to rip Bragg and Merchan to his heart’s content and has repeatedly blasted the judge and prosecutor as part of his claim that the case was a politically motivated scheme to remove him from the campaign trail.
It’s possible the gag order ended with the May 30 jury verdict, but Trump’s lawyers asked Merchan to clarify.
A rep for New York state courts said the order “speaks for itself.” Reps for the Manhattan DA’s office declined to comment. During the trial, Trump repeatedly complained that the gag order was unfair — but state appeals courts kept it in place despite his efforts to remove it. Merchan fined Trump $10,000 for breaching the order, including by griping about the jury on an April 22 radio show.
Trump claimed in that interview that the jury was “95% Democrats,” despite the fact that none of the 12 jurors or six alternates on the case were asked to disclose their political parties, which is a normal practice in politically heated cases like his.