Donald Trump lost the latest round of his gag order appeal in New York, this time at the state’s Court of Appeals. The rejection of the Republican presidential nominee’s appeal was on the list of motions decided by the top court on Thursday.
Judge Juan Merchan had partially terminated the order after the former president was found guilty in May on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. With the trial over, Merchan ended the order’s restrictions related to trial witnesses and the jury, but he kept them in place for speech targeting Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff, court staff, their family members as well as family members of Bragg and Merchan.
The intermediate state appeals court last month rejected Trump’s argument that the trial’s conclusion warranted 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.”
Trump succeeded last week in getting Merchan to postpone the sentencing until after November’s presidential election. When it comes to the remaining gag order, that means it stays in place for that much longer, with Thursday’s rejection potentially being the final word on the matter. It’s unclear if Trump will seek to appeal further to the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave him broad criminal immunity in the July 1 ruling that led to his New York sentencing being postponed.
Merchan is slated to decide on Nov. 12 whether Trump’s Manhattan verdicts can stand in the face of the immunity decision. If they can, then Merchan said sentencing will proceed Nov. 26, though Trump’s lawyers have signaled that they will seek to immediately appeal any adverse ruling prior to sentencing, so that latest delayed Nov. 26 date could be pushed back further. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
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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