Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s New York hush-money criminal case asked a judge Monday to impose a gag order on the former president ahead of next month’s trial, citing what they called his “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks” about people involved in his legal cases.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office is seeking what it described as a “narrowly tailored” order that would bar Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about potential witnesses and jurors, as well as statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.
A gag order would add to restrictions put in place after Trump’s arraignment last April that prohibit him from using evidence in the case to attack witnesses. Prosecutors are also proposing that the names of jurors be kept from the public to “minimize obstacles to jury selection, and protect juror safety.”
Without limits, prosecutors said, Trump’s rhetoric would “create a significant and imminent threat to the trial by distracting personnel, diverting government resources, and delaying the administration of justice.”
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan didn’t rule immediately. Jury selection is scheduled to start March 25. Barring a last-minute delay, it will be the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial.
A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign called the gag order request “election interference pure and simple” and called the hush-money case a “sham orchestrated by partisan Democrats desperately attempting to prevent” Trump from returning to the White House.
Trump lawyer Susan Necheles said the defense will respond in court papers later this week.
The Manhattan case centers on allegations that Trump falsified internal records kept by his company to hide the true nature of payments made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen. The lawyer paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 as part of an effort during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to bury claims he’d had extramarital sexual encounters.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, though there is no guarantee that a conviction would result in jail time.
Should the judge grant this request?
Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, has lashed out about the case repeatedly on social media.
Trump is already under a similar gag order in his Washington, D.C., election interference criminal case and was fined $15,000 for twice violating a gag order imposed in his New York civil fraud trial after he made a disparaging social media post about the judge’s chief law clerk.
“Self-regulation is not a viable alternative, as defendant’s recent history makes plain,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. Trump, they said, “has a longstanding and perhaps singular history” of using social media, campaign speeches and other public statements to “attack judges, jurors, lawyers, witnesses and other individuals involved in legal proceedings against him.”
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “Today, the 2-tiered system of justice implemented against President Trump is on full display, with the request by another Deranged Democrat prosecutor seeking a restrictive gag order, which if granted, would impose an unconstitutional infringement on President Trump’s First Amendment rights, including his ability to defend himself, and the rights of all Americans to hear from President Trump.”
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
