NEW YORK — The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial loosened the restrictions imposed by a gag order, allowing the former president to comment publicly on witnesses and jurors, but the judge left in place measures that bar him from speaking about prosecutors and others connected to the trial.
Trump’s lawyers had requested that Justice Juan Merchan retract the gag order entirely, saying it violates his First Amendment rights and is no longer necessary in the wake of Trump’s conviction in late May of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star. Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, however, opposed lifting the restrictions except for those regarding witnesses.
Merchan’s decision on Tuesday comes as Trump prepares for Thursday’s debate against President Joe Biden, and paves the way for Trump to resume attacking some of his favorite targets, including Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, and Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Trump sought to silence. Cohen and Daniels both testified against Trump in the hush money trial.
Merchan wrote that “there is ample evidence to justify continued concern for the jurors,” but indicated he couldn’t keep the restrictions regarding them in place because the jurors were discharged at the end of the trial. Merchan noted that a separate order preventing Trump and his lawyers from publicly disclosing the identities of jurors would remain in effect. But with the gag order narrowed, Trump is now free to comment about the jury in general terms.
Merchan kept one provision of the gag order in place until Trump’s July 11 sentencing. That provision bars Trump from making public statements about court staff, prosecutors working for District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and family members of people connected to the case. Trump remains free, as he always has been, to criticize Bragg himself and the judge.
Until Trump’s sentence is imposed, Merchan wrote, prosecutors and staffers “must continue to perform their lawful duties free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm.”
During the trial, Trump ran afoul of the gag order numerous times, including by criticizing Cohen, Daniels and the jury. Merchan twice held him in contempt for 10 public statements found to violate the gag order.
Though Tuesday’s decision lifts some of the restrictions on Trump resulting from the Manhattan case, he faces criminal charges in three other pending cases, and in one of those cases — the federal case accusing him of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election — he is under a separate gag order.
In a case accusing him of hoarding classified documents, prosecutors are requesting yet another gag.
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/FQ46nai
