Donald Trump suffered his latest legal loss on Thursday, when a New York state appeals court rejected his challenge to both the limited gag orders against him and his lawyers in the civil fraud case and the contempt orders imposing fines for his violations.
In a four-page ruling, the appeals court said, among other things, that the legal mechanism Trump used to raise the challenge is improper, being outside the normal course of appellate review.
When it came to the order limiting lawyers’ statements, the court said Trump lacked legal standing to challenge it. As to his gag order, the court said it needed to analyze the gravity of the potential harm at issue. The appeals court said that the gravity here is “small,” given that the order against Trump is “narrow, limited to prohibiting solely statements regarding the court’s staff.”
Notably, the New York court cited a federal appeals court’s recent ruling upholding Trump’s gag order in his federal election interference case in Washington. The New York court observed the Washington gag order is broader than the one at issue here, which was reinstated by the state appeals court late last month after it was temporarily paused.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who’s overseeing Trump’s $250 million fraud case, imposed the order in early October forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any members of his staff, following Trump’s posting about the judge’s clerk. Engoron found Trump twice violated the order later that month and imposed fines totaling $15,000. In early November, Engoron issued a supplemental order prohibiting all counsel from making any public statements, in or out of court, that refer to any confidential communications, in any form between him and his staff.
Closing arguments in the case threatening Trump’s business empire are expected next month.
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