Trump sues fraud trial judge to overturn gag orders
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit to block a gag order that prohibits all parties in a civil fraud trial playing out in a New York courtroom from disparaging members of the court’s staff, a measure that the former president claims is a violation of his First Amendment rights.
The judge overseeing the case issued the order after the former president made a series of false and disparaging remarks about his chief clerk outside the courtroom and on his Truth Social account.
Mr Trump already has violated the order twice, incurring $15,000 in fines.
After Mr Trump’s lead attorney Christopher Kise excoriated the clerk for what he called “bias” against his client, and amplified allegations outlined in a right-wing news website, Judge Arthur Engoron expanded the order to include the parties’ attorneys.
The order is a “serious and continuing violation of the procedural and substantive rights guaranteed to them under New York law and the United States Constitution,” according to a filing from attorneys representing defendants in the case, which stems from the attorney general’s $250m lawsuit alleging more than a decade of fraud within the Trump Organization.
Judge Engoron “may not, by judicial decree, transmogrify the court’s summary contempt power into an unfettered license to inflict public punishments on a defendant for the defendant’s out-of-court statements made for the benefit of the fourth estate,” according to the filing.
A written order from the judge earlier this month shot down “unpersuasive” First Amendment arguments, pointing to threats of political violence that have surrounded Mr Trump’s criminal and civil cases, including threats directed at his own chambers.
“The threat of, and actual, violence resulting from heated political rhetoric is well-documented,” he wrote. “Since the commencement of this bench trial, my chambers have been inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters, and packages. The First Amendment right of defendants and their attorneys to comment on my staff is far and away outweighed by the need to protect them from threats and physical harm.”
Judge Engoron said attorneys’ failure to abide by the terms of the order will result in “serious sanctions” against them.
The filing from Mr Trump’s attorneys claims that the judge’s gag order “casts serious doubt on his ability to function as an impartial finder of fact in a bench trial.”
“His extraordinary expansion of that order both limits and chills advocacy on [defendants’] behalf and precludes counsel on pain of contempt from making a record of misconduct and bias in a public courtroom,” attorneys argue.
This is a developing story
