Trump Is Gagged From Discussing Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen in His Hush Money Case

NEW YORK — A New York judge issued a gag order Tuesday barring President Trump from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush money criminal trial.Judge Juan Merchan cited the former president’s prior comments about him and others in the case, as well as a looming April 15 trial date, in granting a prosecution request for what it termed a “narrowly tailored” order barring Trump from making certain out-of-court statements.“It is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount,” Judge Merchan wrote. Prosecutors had asked for the gag order, citing what they called Mr. Trump’s “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks” about people involved in his legal cases.The gag order does not bar comments about Judge Merchan or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat. It prohibits, though, Mr. Trump from attacking key figures in the case, like his former lawyer-turned-nemesis Michael Cohen or the porn star Stephanie Clifford, also known as “Stormy Daniels.” The prosecutors’ office declined to comment. Messages seeking comment were left for Mr. Trump’s campaign.The gag order adds to restrictions put in place after Mr. Trump’s arraignment last April that prohibit him from using evidence in the case to attack witnesses.After a hearing on Monday where Judge Merchan set the April 15 trial date, Mr. Trump tore into prosecutor Matthew Colangelo on social media, referring to the former Justice Department official as a “radical left from DOJ” sent to the district attorney’s office “to run the trial against Trump and that was done by Biden and his thugs.”Judge Merchan cited that comment in his ruling.The Manhattan case centers on allegations that Mr. Trump falsified internal records kept by his company to hide the true nature of payments made to Cohen. The lawyer paid Ms. Clifford $130,000 as part of an effort during Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to bury claims he’d had extramarital sexual encounters.Mr. 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. The former president and Republican presidential front-runner has lashed out about the case repeatedly on social media. Mr. Trump warned of “potential death & destruction” before his indictment last year, posting a photo on social media of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of Mr. Bragg and complaining that Judge Merchan is “a Trump-hating judge” with a family full of “Trump haters.”Mr. Trump was 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. In January, a Manhattan federal judge threatened Mr. Trump with expulsion from court in a civil trial on writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claims against him after he was heard saying “it is a witch hunt” and “it really is a con job.”“Self-regulation is not a viable alternative, as defendant’s recent history makes plain,” Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors wrote in court papers. Mr. 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.”A federal appeals court panel in December largely upheld Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order in the January 6 case but narrowed it in an important way by freeing Mr. Trump to criticize Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case. Manhattan prosecutors echoed that ruling by excluding Mr. Bragg from their proposed gag order.Last May, Judge Merchan issued what’s known as a “protective order,” warning Mr. Trump and his lawyers that they risked being held in contempt if they disseminated evidence from the hush-money case to third parties, used it to attack witnesses or posted sensitive material to social media.Judge Merchan, noting Mr. Trump’s “special” status as a former president and current candidate, tried to make clear at the time that the protective order shouldn’t be construed as a gag order, saying, “It’s certainly not my intention to in any way impede Mr. Trump’s ability to campaign for the presidency of the United States.”The Associated Press

Trump Is Gagged From Discussing Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen in His Hush Money Case

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