Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial and subsequent conviction, has lifted parts of the former president’s gag order.
Trump was previously barred from talking about witnesses, jurors and potential jurors, counsel from the prosecution, and related family members. Merchan lifted parts of the gag order on Tuesday, allowing the former president to comment on jurors and witnesses, including his former attorney Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels.
The revised order does not prevent Trump from criticizing the case or speaking about Merchan or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but keeps in place restrictions on his statements about individual prosecutors, court personnel, and family members of prosecutors and the judge.
A separate order that blocks Trump or anyone else on his campaign from identifying members of the anonymous jury remains in effect, according to the order by Merchan on Tuesday.
The former president’s legal counsel argued the gag order restricted Trump’s campaign speech and argued it might limit his ability to respond to President Joe Biden’s remarks during their debate on Thursday, the first of the 2024 presidential election season.
Bragg did not object to lifting the gag order on witnesses, but he urged Merchan to keep the order in place against individual prosecutors and others involved.
Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cheung still ridiculed the judge’s decision in a statement, saying it “leaves in place portions of the unconstitutional Gag Order, preventing President Trump from speaking freely about Judge Merchan’s disqualifying conflicts and the overwhelming evidence exposing this whole Crooked Joe Biden – directed Witch Hunt.”
The gag order was prompted in part because Trump railed against Merchan’s daughter ahead of the start of the April hush money trial, arguing Merchan should be recused from the case due to his daughter’s work with a political firm that on behalf of Democratic critics of the former president, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
“This is another unlawful decision by a highly conflicted judge, which is blatantly un-American as it gags President Trump, the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election during the upcoming Presidential Debate on Thursday. President Trump and his legal team will immediately challenge today’s unconstitutional order,” Cheung said.
Trump last month became the first former president to be convicted in a criminal trial after a jury found he committed 34 counts of falsifying records tied to a hush money payment to silence Daniels from coming forward during the 2016 election about an affair she said she had with Trump in 2006. Trump maintains that the affair never happened and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Merchan fined Trump $10,000 for 10 separate violations of the order during the seven-week trial and warned that jail time would be considered for further violations. Trump is slated to be sentenced on July 11, and while legal experts say jail time is not guaranteed for first-time offenders, they also suggest that the judge’s sentencing order could be influenced by the repeated violations of the gag order during the trial.
Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove told the court in a June 11 filing that prosecutors were using the restrictions as a “political sword.”
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Meanwhile, Republican allies have ramped up their claims in recent weeks that the Biden administration coordinated with Bragg’s office to bring the case against Trump, pointing to former Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo’s departure from the Biden administration to join Bragg’s office nearly a year before the Democratic DA announced his indictment against Trump in April 2023.
Under the revised gag order, Trump would still be in legal danger if he repeated similar allegations against Colangelo, in addition to his requirement to refrain from targeting family members of the judge.
