New York state’s top court rejected Donald Trump’s gag order appeal Tuesday, as the former president separately presses Judge Juan Merchan to terminate the order.
In his pending trial court motion, Trump argues that the order, which he opposed from the start, should end now that his trial is over. He was found guilty last month on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. His sentencing is set for July 11.
Merchan previously found that Trump violated the order 10 times, which the judge imposed to protect the integrity of the criminal proceedings. It bars Trump from speaking out against witnesses, jurors, lawyers and court staff and their families.
Trump complained in his motion to Merchan that it’s unfair that trial witnesses like Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels can speak about Trump but he can’t speak about them, and he claims that President Joe Biden wants to capitalize on the gag order’s restrictions, including at their presidential debate June 27.
There’s an argument that the gag order may at least operate differently now that the trial is concluded, but whether and to what extent it does is still to be decided by Merchan. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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