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Prosecutors ask for gag order clarification after Trump makes social media post critical of judge’s daughter

March 30, 2024 | | Print Article

Former President Donald Trump is facing a possible gag order violation in his New York case for attacking the judge’s daughter on social media.

After Judge Juan M. Merchan issued the gag order Tuesday barring Trump from talking about trial witnesses, prosecutors, and other figures tied to the case, the former president proceeded to repeatedly attack the judge’s daughter on Truth Social.

As seen below, he first claimed Merchan’s daughter “is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, (Dem)Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden.”

In a second post published a day later, he accused the judge’s daughter of posting pictures “of her ‘dream’ of putting me in jail.”

Look:

And in yet another post published Thursday, he accused Merchan’s daughter of being a “Rabid Trump Hater” who works for the left and “has admitted to having conversations with her father” about him.

Look:

The attacks did not sit well with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office subsequently penned a letter to Merchan asking him to “clarify or confirm” whether the gag order applies to attacks on family members, according to The Washington Post.

“Bragg’s office wrote in a letter filed Thursday and unsealed Friday that in light of the attacks, the judge ‘should make abundantly clear that the [gag order] protects family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order,'” the Post reported.

“It also said that Merchan should ‘warn [Trump] that his recent conduct is contumacious and direct him to immediately desist’ and that ignoring the warning should warrant sanctions,” according to the Post.

Responding to this request, Trump’s attorneys penned a letter of their own Friday arguing that the original gag order does not in fact apply to the former president’s recent social media posts.

“The Court cannot ‘direct’ President Trump to do something that the gag order does not require,” they wrote. “To ‘clarify or confirm’ the meaning of the gag order in the way the People suggest would be to expand it.”

Their point was that the original gag order had evidently said nothing about attacks on family members of the court overseeing the case.

Dovetailing back to Trump’s Truth Social posts, they also attracted criticism from elsewhere.

“Trump attacks the daughter of the judge in his Manhattan criminal case because he (1) can’t help being despicable, (2) wants a gag order for political reasons, and/or (3) wants to be able to say, if convicted, that the judge mistreated him due to his attacks,” Eric Columbus, who identifies as an “Obama appointee at DOJ/DHS,” tweeted.

“Trump puts a target not only Judge Merchan in the criminal case in Manhattan but on his daughter,” former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance added. “This is a rank effort at intimidating the judge by threatening his family. It merits a gag order but also serious pushback from GOP leadership–which we know won’t come.”

But others voiced their support of Trump and disgust with the double standards.

Vivek Saxena
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