Manhattan Judge Juan Marchan on Tuesday lifted parts of a gag order against Donald Trump, allowing the former president to speak publicly about witnesses in his New York trial.
Trump is still barred from speaking about Marchan and the staff and family of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.New York Post report.
“It’s clearly un-American.”
Trump’s legal team has repeatedly urged Marchand to lift the restrictive gag order, arguing it would prevent Trump from speaking at Thursday night’s presidential debate with Joe Biden. Marchand has previously rejected multiple attempts during the trial to lift the order, arguing it protects those involved in the case.
In May, a Manhattan jury found former President Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that Bragg had filed against him. The jury’s verdict was based on testimony from witnesses including porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Trump adviser Michael Cohen.
During the trial, Cohen frequently and publicly criticized Trump on social media, while the former president was barred from defending himself by a gag order from Marchan. At one point, Trump’s legal team also asked for a gag order against Cohen, but the judge denied that request as well.
The order against Trump still bars him from criticizing Marchan’s daughter, Lauren, who works at a progressive political consulting firm. And he can’t speak about Bragg’s team, including one of the lead prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, who held a senior role in Biden’s Justice Department before effectively accepting a demotion to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Judge Marchan found that Trump had violated the gag order 10 times and fined him $10,000 during the trial.
Last week, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, rejected an appeal by Trump’s lawyers, who had argued that the gag order restricted “core political speech on vital issues during a presidential campaign” and “violated the fundamental right of all American voters to hear the leading candidates in the presidential race.”Blaze News As previously reported, the court wrote in its dismissal that “no substantive constitutional questions are directly involved.”
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in his New York trial on July 11. His lawyers have said they plan to appeal the jury’s guilty verdict.
On Tuesday, Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chang called Judge Marchan a “highly conflicted judge” who made “yet another illegal decision” that “is clearly un-American and seeks to silence President Trump, a leading 2024 presidential candidate, in the upcoming presidential debate.”
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