Donald Trump lost his latest bid to crush his New York gag order, with a state appeals court keeping the limits in place ahead of the former president’s sentencing on 34 counts of falsifying business records. After Trump’s trial ended with guilty verdicts on all counts in May, Judge Juan Merchan partially terminated the order as it pertained to trial witnesses and the jury, but kept its restrictions on speech targeting Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff, court staff, their family members as well as family members of Bragg and Merchan.
In a ruling on Thursday, the state appeals court rejected Trump’s argument that the trial’s conclusion was a change in circumstances warranting terminating the order completely prior to sentencing. “The fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing,” the appeals court wrote, citing the limited nature of the remaining order and noting that “threats received by District Attorney staff after the jury verdict continued to pose a significant and imminent threat.”
The GOP presidential nominee is set to be sentenced Sept. 18, assuming Merchan rejects the former president’s immunity motion in a ruling due Sept. 6. The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, rendered after Trump’s trial, raised questions about its effect, if any, on the so-called hush money case.
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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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