A New York appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s arguments seeking relief from a gag order in his hush-money case as “unavailing.”
Trump remains barred from launching verbal attacks against employees of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and their relatives until his sentencing on Sept. 18, the mid-level appeals court ruled.
In the wake of a jury’s May 30 verdict finding Trump guilty of 34 felonies for falsifying business records in a scheme to hide damaging information from the voting public in 2016, Merchan lifted portions of the gag order preventing him from commenting on trial participants, including the jury and witnesses like Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels.
In their Thursday decision, the Appellate Division, First Department panel found Merchan was right to keep the part protecting his and the DA’s staff and relatives and that prosecutors demonstrated the targeting of Bragg’s staff “continued to pose a significant and imminent threat.”
The Daily News in June reported on a surge in death threats and hate mail directed at the DA following Trump’s conviction, including a raft of racist correspondence sent to his workplace and addresses associated with his campaign.
Trump is still free to talk about Bragg and the judge, who were never covered by the gag order and regularly feature as subjects of his online diatribes. He was fined thousands of dollars during his historic trial for violating the order multiple times and was at one point threatened with jail.
The Republican presidential nominee has asked Merchan to vacate his conviction and dismiss the underlying indictment in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, arguing that any evidence relating to his time in office was out of bounds. The judge is slated to rule on the motion by Sept. 6.
The conservative supermajority of the nation’s highest court, including three Trump-appointed justices, on July 1 found that most “official acts” by presidents are shielded from criminal liability and that prosecutors can’t present evidence of official acts to prove unofficial ones were illegal.
Last week, prosecutors asked Merchan to reject Trump’s motion, arguing that the hush money scheme “was entirely personal and largely committed before the election,” and had no relationship “whatsoever” to his official duties as commander-in-chief.
If evidence dating to his time in office was improperly submitted, they said his conviction should still stand in light of the “overwhelming evidence” of his guilt.
Trump, 78, remains charged in two criminal cases in Washington, D.C., and Georgia relating to his alleged efforts to corruptly overturn the will of voters in the 2020 presidential election, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. The federal case in D.C. is expected to be significantly altered by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
The former president’s classified documents case was thrown out by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon last month in a decision that sent shockwaves through the legal community. Prosecutors are appealing.
A spokesperson for DA Bragg declined comment. Trump’s attorneys did not immediately return a Daily News inquiry.
