Judge Merchan Adjusts Trump’s Gag Order
He can now “speak about protected witnesses and jurors.”
Judge Juan Merchan adjusted the gag order he slapped on former President Donald Trump before his hush money trial.
A jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business regarding a payment to Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about a supposed affair.
Merchan’s gag order barred Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about witnesses with regard to their potential participation or about counsel in the case – other than Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – or about court staff, DA staff or family members of staff.
Merchan on Tuesday partially lifted the gag order because the trial has concluded.
Trump is now able to speak about protected witnesses and jurors.
Some topics remain off-limits:
Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement Tuesday, “Today’s order by Acting Justice Merchan leaves in place portions of the unconstitutional Gag Order, preventing President Trump from speaking freely about Judge Merchan’s disqualifying conflicts and the overwhelming evidence exposing this whole Crooked Joe Biden – directed Witch Hunt.”
“This is another unlawful decision by a highly conflicted judge, which is blatantly un-American as it gags President Trump, the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election during the upcoming Presidential Debate on Thursday. President Trump and his legal team will immediately challenge today’s unconstitutional order.”
Merchan ordered the gag order on February 22.
Trump’s team challenged it on March 4, but a Court of Appeals upheld it twice. The judges said it did not violate the First Amendment since Merchan “properly weighed against the court’s historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases, and the right of persons related to tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm.”
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Comments
anything to stop the maga freight train
The Court of Appeal just made themselves irrelevant by upholding the gag order as it was, nothing the historical importance wank wank wank etc.
If they weren’t going to remove the gag order they SHOULD have applied it to everyone else given the rather historical importance of what else is going on at the moment and the ability to interfere with the presidential campaign that only Trump can’t speak about the trial.
Absolute fucking dogs breakfast BUT understandable given Democrats have nothing of note to actually campaign on.
What do you mean “they should have applied it to everyone else”? It already applied to all parties to the case; there is nobody else to whom it could apply!
Did it?
Always quick to leap in and defend the left.
Others involved spread lies about the case freely–so long as they were defaming Trump and his associates.
And for pointing this out you will scream ‘liar’ as you always do.
But even insisting on the false valuation of Mar-a-lago at 18 million is defamation. It is a perpetuation of an utterly incorrect description of how property valuation and the banking industry works.
So your compatriots, the Democrats, are allowed to lie and smear while the Trump team is gagged.
Yes, all parties to the case were covered by the order. Nobody who is not a party was ever covered. And the judge was never protected.
Who else is looking forward to seeing Merchan being run through the legal wringer?
I won’t be holding my breath.
He can’t be. His rulings may be overturned, but he can’t be personally held to account for them. There is no way for him to face any personal consequences.
And that is one of the biggest problems with our legal system today.
Saying he can’t be held accountable is funny, there are a lot of ways to hold people accountable.
You are assuming that everything was conducted on the up-and-up. I wouldn’t assume that. And I also wouldn’t assume that there is no paper trail. At a minimum, he made a donation to the Biden campaign and his daughter provides services to the Biden campaign (or Dems, I’ve forgotten). I think there’s smoke. Perhaps there’s fire.
The Democrat thinks everything Democrats do is on the up and up–no matter how hideously illegal it is.
It doesn’t matter. His $35 worth of donations were cleared by the ethics commission. His daughter doesn’t work for any party to the case, and there is no indication that she stood to make any money from the case’s outcome. She provides services to Democrats just like Mrs Thomas provides services to Republicans. That’s never been considered to be grounds for recusal.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. Even if it could be proven that he did wrong, so long as it was within his job description he has absolute immunity. The only way he could get in trouble is if he did something that is outside a judge’s job description, and there’s no indication of anything like that.
Remember that Nifong was absolutely immune for everything he did as a corrupt prosecutor. The only thing they could get him for was fabricating evidence, because that’s not part of a prosecutor’s job. Knowingly presenting fabricated evidence would have been fine; the problem was fabricating it himself.
I’m pretty sure unethical behavior doesn’t come with a “right” to be free of the consequences from said behavior.
Too late, asshole
Merchan is a criminal of the highest order who needs to end up spending the rest of his useless life in prison.
Wrong. Do you want all judges being personally liable for their decisions in court? I do not. Weaponizing against decisions would be used against any judge, wasting their time and the court’s time. Until the judicial oversight process is fixed, there will be no way to rein activist judges in and force proper recusals.
Lets see, J6 and a bunch of other cases where crooked judges have made a mockery of the legal process. I think that all this is an indication racketeering, so yes, those judges deserve what is coming.
Merchan is a great judge, just like Lance Ito.
Remember the /sarc tags.
Not needed by anyone who remembers Judge Ito.
I rather expect that part of Merchan’s plan is to claim grounds to arrest and imprison Trump after the debate.
Subotai Bahadur
There is a lot of Color of Law to prosecute with Dems and their stooges.
I’m expecting 34 consecutive maximum sentences. Effectively, LWOP for legal book entries, with Epsteining to follow.
Otherwise, they’re out of lawfare. It’s their last chance.
Would Trump pull 100 million in donations with a picture of him behind bars for his campaign if merchan were to do that?
“…claim grounds to arrest and imprison Trump after the debate.”
He doesn’t even have to do it himself. He’s setup to *provision* the appartchiks for that talking point. Fodder for another “trial” in the court of kangaroo analysis.
“apparatchiks”
This was done so CNN can make the debate about the trial.
Of course, Merchan has kept himself under this order.
Trump is now allowed to complain about the common folk but not the corrupt aristocrat. Lovely optics there.
No, he hasn’t. He himself was never protected under the order. Trump has always been and remains free to say whatever he likes about Bragg and about Merchan.
Merchan adjusted the gag order so when the SC rules the original gag order was overly broad, he can just say “Oh, we fixed that” and ignore the SC. Hopefully, the SC can simply put a size 12 foot down on the order and rule it unconstitutional restriction and therefore totally nul and void.
There was never any prospect of that happening, and once proceedings are over it will be moot.
It is possible to lodge a complaint about the judge’s decisions before the group that polices the activities of judges in New York, isn’t it? Or (as seems likely) would that be a waste of time?
There’s the judicial conduct commission. But it’s unlikely to find fault with anything he did.
He consulted the judicial ethics commission in advance on his donations and on his daughter’s job; they told him it wasn’t a problem.