By Luc Cohen
(Reuters) – New York prosecutors say they are open to a partial lifting of a judge’s silence order now that the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been convicted on criminal charges stemming from an attempt to influence the 2016 election by buying the silence of a porn star.
Prosecutors in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in Manhattan said in a court filing Thursday and made public Friday that they supported allowing him to speak publicly about witnesses in the case.
But they insisted on justice Juan Merchan to impose restrictions on his comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors, citing risks to their safety.
In the first criminal trial of a US president, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on May 30 of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen‘s $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Danielswho threatened to go public before the elections with her story about a sexual encounter with Trump.
Trump, who was elected to a four-year term in 2016, denies the alleged 2006 encounter and has vowed to appeal his conviction. The sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before his party meets to formally nominate him as president ahead of the November 5 elections.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
They had asked for the gag order to be lifted, arguing it would hamper his ability to respond to attacks from political opponents. They complained that he was not allowed to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels, who testified on behalf of the prosecution at the trial.
They said it was especially important ahead of Trump’s debate next Thursday with his rival, Democratic President Joe Biden, who has called Trump a convicted felon.
It was unclear when Merchan would decide on any changes to the gag order. The judge fined Trump $10,000 for violations of the order during the seven-week trial and warned him on May 6 that he would face jail time if he violated the order again.
Merchan imposed the silence order before the trial began in April because he felt Trump’s history of threatening statements risked derailing the proceedings.
Prosecutors said the silence order does not prohibit Trump from criticizing the verdict, the case in general, Bragg or Merchan.
“Many of Defendant’s complaints simply ignore the narrowness of the Court’s orders,” they wrote in the filing.
Prosecutors said the restriction on Trump’s comments about witnesses in the trial no longer needed to be enforced.
But they said: “The defendant’s supporters, following his example, have attempted to identify jurors and threatened violence against them.”
“Thus, there remains a critical need to protect the jurors in this case from attacks by the suspect and those he incites to action,” they wrote.
Defense lawyers previously argued that holding Trump responsible for “harassing communications” by “independent third parties” was a violation of his right to free speech.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in Boston; Editing by Howard Goller)
