The New York judge overseeing the Manhattan trial against former President Donald Trump partially lifted his gag order this week. Judge Juan Merchan of the New York Supreme Court allowed the partial reprieve on June 25 and stated that the rest of the gag order would expire after sentencing.
The ban against comments about witnesses and jurors was lifted.
Judge Merchan said, “Circumstances have now changed. The trial portion of these proceedings ended when the verdict was rendered, and the jury discharged.”
Post-Trial Termination of Trump Gag Order by PJ Media on Scribd
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office agreed with Trump's attorneys that his gag order should no longer prohibit him from speaking about trial witnesses now that proceedings ended on May 30.
“The People agree that this provision no longer needs to be enforced,” according to a brief by the prosecution. “The Court issued this provision to protect prospective witnesses’ willingness to participate fully and candidly."
“Now that the jury has delivered a verdict, however, the compelling interest in protecting the witnesses’ ability to testify without interference is no longer present,” the brief continued.
Merchan's gag order against Trump was upheld by the appellate courts on March 26 after the former president's attorneys opposed the speech ban. Trump was accused of making several prohibited comments about persons involved in his trial, leading up to and through the first week of the proceedings.
He has since been fined 10 times with fines totaling $10,000 for violations of the gag order, regarding comments ranging from criticism of prosecutorial witnesses Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford and publicly noting a Fox News report that some of the jurors were allegedly “undercover liberal activists."
The former president publicly accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of prosecuting him for political purposes at the bequest of his Democrat opponent, President Joe Biden, and his administration.
Trump has also alleged on social media that Merchan's rulings against him were politically motivated due to his daughter's political and business interests.
Merchan's daughter runs a pro-Democrat marketing firm, which is making millions off of fundraisers over the news of the prosecution and whose clients happen to be political enemies of the former president.
Attorneys for Trump have since filed a motion for Merchan to recuse himself based on his daughter's conflict of interest. However, that motion was rejected and the former president's statements about Merchan's daughter led to the expansion of the gag order to ban future statements about the relatives of the judge and the Manhattan DA.
The gag order covered bans on statements about witnesses, statements about court staff and prosecutors, which was then later extended to include Bragg and Merchan's family members, but not themselves, along with a ban on statements about the jurors.
Trump's attorneys tried to appeal the gag order in the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court and up to the New York Court of Appeals, but the two courts upheld Merchan's restrictions.
The DA's office and Merchan did not sanction Trump on all of his statements that violated the gag order rules. The judge had deemed former President Trump’s interview answer that witness David Pecker was “a nice guy” not a gag order violation.
The former president was not sanctioned for alleging federal and state collusion regarding the prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, who had worked in Biden's Justice Department before joining the Manhattan DA's office.
Prosecutors initially opposed lifting the ban on comments pertaining to jurors, who are no longer under orders to avoid discussing the case.
Merchan said he intended to keep the part of the gag order covering jurors, but ruled that the New York state appellate court upheld the part of the original gag order, which only applied to the trial, leading to the termination of that rule.
Still, the judge stated that his protective order protecting the identity of individual jurors “will remain in effect until further order of this Court.”
Merchan kept the provisions about court staff and counsel, based on the fact that “the proceedings are not concluded.”
Court staff and counsel “must continue to perform their lawful duties free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm,” said the judge.
The order will remain “in effect until the imposition of the sentence,” he added.
Meanwhile, the New York Attorney General’s office, which went after former President Trump allegedly overvaluing his net worth last year, is now arguing that Judge Arthur Engoron, who ruled against the former president, should not recuse himself from the case, despite alleged improprieties by the judge.
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