It\u2019s difficult to think of a more combustible mixture than Donald Trump and a gag order. Even with the former president\u2019s freedom on the line, that combination is smoldering again.<\/p>\n
After violating gag orders on at least two and arguably three previous occasions \u2014 and after a judge this week employed a novel tactic to get him to stop \u2014 Trump is flouting his latest one. He\u2019s doing so in a way that reinforces just how much latitude he\u2019s been given, and just how untenable that latitude might be as his various cases proceed.<\/p>\n
The faceoff is one with increasingly profound implications not just for Trump, but for a country whose judicial system is tasked with holding him legally accountable but is taking a beating as judges try to figure out what to do.<\/p>\n
The judge in Trump\u2019s Manhattan criminal trial late Monday expanded Trump\u2019s gag order in that case to include the judge\u2019s and the district attorney\u2019s families. New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan did so after Trump repeatedly attacked Merchan\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n
Within hours Tuesday morning, Trump responded by not-subtly gesturing at the same attacks.<\/p>\n
In a Truth Social post, Trump derided the expanded gag order while suggestively citing \u201cconflicts taking place in his courtroom.\u201d Trump has claimed Merchan is \u201ccompromised\u201d because his daughter works for a Democratic-aligned digital marketing company.<\/p>\n
The next hour, Trump posted a Fox News video that more directly echoed the attack. While Trump in the text of his post cited related comments from a legal-analyst ally, the video itself included Fox host Brian Kilmeade pointing to the same supposed conflict of interest involving the judge\u2019s daughter that Trump has played up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, the fact is, the judge\u2019s daughter is a[n] activist who works for Kamala Harris,\u201d Kilmeade said in the video Trump posted, adding: \u201cThat to me is something that, if I\u2019m Donald Trump, I\u2019m clearly concerned about \u2014 that the judge has a daughter who feels this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The video Trump promoted also featured Kilmeade surfacing a claim about Merchan\u2019s daughter \u2014 that her social media account featured an image of Trump behind bars \u2014 that the New York court system had already moved to debunk.<\/p>\n
Whether either of these instances will be found to violate the gag order, they are starkly reminiscent of Trump\u2019s violating a previous order in his New York civil fraud case.<\/p>\n
Back then, a judge ordered Trump to stop attacking his law clerk. As in the case of Merchan\u2019s daughter, Trump had attacked the clerk to suggest bias on the part of the judge, and Trump had similarly cited debunked social media content.<\/p>\n
In addition to his campaign\u2019s leaving up a post attacking the clerk despite the gag order, Trump went on to cite \u201ca person who is very partisan sitting alongside\u201d the judge. The clerk sat beside the judge. When pressed by the judge, Trump claimed he had been referring not to the clerk but to his former lawyer Michael Cohen. But the judge found that explanation \u201cnot credible\u201d \u2014 noting Trump has regularly attacked Cohen by name. Trump was fined a total of $15,000 for the twin violations.<\/p>\n
(Around the same time, Trump also posted an attack on former attorney general William P. Barr after a gag order was reinstated in his federal election-subversion case preventing him from attacking potential witnesses such as Barr. Trump\u2019s campaign said he had done so before he knew the gag order was back in effect, but the post remains live more than five months later. Trump has not been sanctioned for it.)<\/p>\n
The financial penalties don\u2019t appear to have dissuaded Trump, in much the same way the $86 million he owes E. Jean Carroll for defaming her doesn\u2019t appear to have dissuaded him from continuing to attack her in the same terms.<\/p>\n
Perhaps recognizing that \u2014 and recognizing the fact that jailing a former president and current presidential candidate for violating gag orders would be drastic and impractical \u2014 Merchan attempted a novel approach in his expanded gag order. Rather than merely threatening to fine or jail Trump if he violated the gag order, Merchan threatened to withhold the names of jurors from Trump\u2019s legal team.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefendant is hereby put on notice that he will forfeit any statutory right he may have to access juror names if he engages in any conduct that threatens the safety and integrity of the jury or the jury selection process,\u201d Merchan wrote.<\/p>\n
The idea was apparently that this sanction could prove compelling to Trump in a way that monetary penalties and an unlikely stint in jail haven\u2019t and wouldn\u2019t. That\u2019s because it bears on Trump\u2019s ability to scrutinize would-be jurors and defend himself in the case. (Trump would surely claim that this would damage his ability to get a fair trial, but it\u2019s not unheard of for judges to keep jurors\u2019 identities private from litigants.)<\/p>\n
The fact that Merchan felt compelled to employ such an unusual threat is instructive, considering how much strain Trump\u2019s continued attacks on judges, prosecutors and witnesses have put on the legal system that will now decide his criminal fate.<\/p>\n
But even that potential sanction doesn\u2019t appear to have convinced Trump to operate with more care just yet. And with the stakes even greater now than they were for Trump\u2019s civil cases \u2014 and with Trump\u2019s Manhattan trial due to start April 15 \u2014 it\u2019s not difficult to see this situation coming to a tense head soon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to think of a more combustible mixture than Donald Trump and a gag order. Even with the former president\u2019s freedom on the line, that combination is smoldering again. After violating gag orders on at least two and arguably three previous occasions \u2014 and after a judge this week employed a novel tactic to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}