Trump May Have Screwed Himself Bigly in New York Hush-Money Trial
Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have much success at keeping his mouth shut. A gag order issued last week by Judge Juan Merchan in the former president’s hush-money trial couldn’t stop Trump from attacking the judge’s daughter on Truth Social, not once but at least twice.
Now Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants to make that gag order even stronger. In a court filing Monday, Bragg said that Trump’s “dangerous, violent, and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings.” He urged Merchan to reiterate that attacks on the family of court staff, as well that of the district attorney, are prohibited.
“There is no constitutional right to target the family of this Court, let alone on the blatant falsehoods that have served as the flimsiest pretexts” for Trump’s attacks, Bragg stated in the filing.
Trump’s initial gag order last week was only the latest in a stream of judicial reprimands on his speech. In October, Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order in Trump’s bank fraud trial after he attacked the judge’s principal law clerk in the case. Trump was later fined $15,000 for violating the order.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump’s D.C. trial for election interference, slapped him with a gag order in March after Trump attacked her family.
Right-wing activists and lawmakers have targeted Merchan’s daughter since last year, after Trump’s initial indictment in the hush-money case. Several far-right personalities, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, took issue with the fact that Merchan’s daughter worked at one time for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, claiming it was proof that Trump’s arrest and indictment were a political witch hunt.