Following a brief hiatus earlier this month, a state appeals court in New York reinstated the gag restrictions granted by the judge supervising Donald Trump’s $250 million civil fraud trial on Thursday.
No rationale for re-establishing the gag orders was offered by the appeals court in its two-page judgement. These restrictions prohibit Trump and his attorneys from making any statements regarding Justice Arthur Engoron’s staff.
The two-month trial has revolved around the gag orders, frequently overshadowing even the testimony. Just days into the trial, Trump made a derogatory social media post about Judge Allison Greenfield, who is the judge’s legal clerk and sits on the bench with the judge, prompting the first gag order. After Trump’s subsequent two violations of the gag order, Engoron fined him a total of $15,000.
In the aftermath of the first gag order, Trump’s legal team started nitpicking about Greenfield’s note-passing to Engoron and “eye rolls and constant whispering” during proceedings.
Following this, Engoron instituted a second gag order that forbade any trial attorneys “from making any public statements, in or out of court, that refer to any confidential communications, in any form, between my staff and me.”
On November 16, just hours after an appeals court associate justice momentarily halted the gag restrictions, Trump took advantage of the chance to publicly criticise Greenfield, launching a social media tirade against her and Engoron. In his letter, Trump blasted the judge for “his Ridiculous and Unconstitutional Gag Order,” which prevented him from defending himself and his politically biassed and unruly Trump-hating clerk.
Trump turned his attention to Engoron’s family on Thursday, not long after the appeals court reinstated the gag orders. The ex-president shared many postings by far-right activist Laura Loomer that attacked Engoron’s family on his social media site, Truth Social. Loomer included what appeared to be a photo of the judge’s kid in one of her articles, along with Tish James, the New York attorney general who filed the civil fraud claim against Trump. According to other tweets, the judge’s wife had allegedly shared anti-Trump photos on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
X account in issue “does not belong to me,” Dawn Engoron wrote in an email to AWN, claiming to be Engoron’s wife. Twitter is not something I’m familiar with. No anti-Trump messages have ever appeared on my posts.
Among Loomer’s comments that Trump published on Truth Social was one that the judge’s wife and family had put out. My right to a jury trial is denied by this statute. Does this really exist in the United States? Even though I’ve been through my fair share of unfair trials, this one ranks among the worst in New York’s history.
Engoron has already stated that his chambers “have been inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters and packages,” and he has reiterated multiple times throughout the trial that political speech might incite violence. However, except from his employees, he has not extended his gag orders to cover anybody else.
The judgement by the appeals court was a “tragic day for the rule of law,” according to a statement released Thursday by Trump lawyer Chris Kise.
President Trump may choose to remain silent on the matter of his belief in his inability to get a fair trial in a nation that holds the First Amendment in the highest regard. The fact that this is taking place in the United States is unbelievable, and it’s hard to fathom a more unfair procedure, Kise remarked.
In his criminal case in Washington, D.C., for election tampering, a federal court imposed a gag order, which Trump is separately contesting. A federal appeals court is currently considering the scope of that gag order, so it is on hold.