NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s lawyers are asking a New York judge to lift a gag order that barred the former president from commenting on witnesses, jurors and others involved in the criminal case that led to his conviction for falsifying data to cover up a matter. possible sex scandal.
Trump’s lawyers wrote this in a letter on Tuesday Todd Blanche and Emil Bove asked Judge Juan M. Merchan to end the gag order, arguing that there is nothing to justify “continued restrictions on President Trump’s First Amendment rights” now that the trial is over.
The lawyers said, among other things, that Trump is entitled to “unrestrained campaign advocacy” in light of President Joe Biden’s public comments about the verdict last Friday, and the continued public criticism of him by his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen and porn actor Stormy Daniels, both key witnesses for the prosecution.
Trump’s lawyers also argue that the gag order should be lifted so he can fully discuss the case and his conviction during the first presidential debate scheduled for June 27.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Merchan issued Trump’s silence order on March 26, a few weeks before the start of the trial, after prosecutors raised concerns about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s tendency to attack people involved in his cases.
Merchan later expanded it to ban comments about his own family after Trump posted social media posts attacking the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant. Comments about Merchan and District Attorney Alvin Bragg are allowed, but the gag order prohibits statements about court personnel and members of Bragg’s prosecution team.
Trump was convicted Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying corporate records stemming from what prosecutors say was an attempt to cover up a hush money payment to Daniels just before the 2016 election. She claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump ten years earlier, which he denies. He will be sentenced on July 11.
Prosecutors had said they wanted the gag order to “protect the integrity of these criminal proceedings and prevent jury bias.” In the order, Merchan noted that prosecutors requested the restrictions “for the duration of the trial.” He did not specify when they would be lifted.
Blanche told the Associated Press last Friday that he assumed the silence order would expire when the trial ended and that he would ask Merchan for clarity, which he did on Tuesday.
“It’s a bit of a theater of the absurd at the moment, isn’t it? Michael Cohen is no longer a witness in this trial,” Blanche told the AP. “The process is over. The same applies to all other witnesses. So we’ll see. I don’t mean that in any way as disrespectful to the judge and the process. I just want to be careful and understand when it no longer applies.
Trump has continued to operate under the belief that he is still muzzled, telling reporters at Trump Tower on Friday: “I am under a gag order, a dirty gag order.”
Referring to Cohen, Trump said, “I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order,” before labeling his former courtroom-turned-lawyer as “a sleazebag.”
During the trial, Merchan held Trump in contempt of court, fining him $10,000 for violating the gag order and threatening to put him in jail if he did it again.
Trump’s use of the term “sleazebag” to describe Cohen just before the trial confused prosecutors but was not considered a violation of the gag order by the judge. Merchan declined to chastise Trump for an April 10 social media post that referred to Cohen and Daniels, another key prosecution witness, with that insult.
The judge said at the time that Trump’s claim that he responded to previous posts by Cohen that were critical of him “is sufficient to cause him to consider whether prosecutors met their burden in showing that the post was out of bounds.” used to be.
