Donald J. Trump claims the order has unfairly restricted his free speech rights ahead of his sentencing on 34 felony counts. He has nonetheless attacked the judge, prosecutor and justice system.
Prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that a judge should keep in place major elements of a gag order that was imposed on Donald J. Trump, citing dozens of threats that have been made against officials connected to the case.
The order, issued before Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial began in mid-April, bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff and relatives of the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have sought to have the order lifted since Mr. Trump’s conviction in late May. But in a 19-page filing on Friday, prosecutors argued that while Justice Merchan no longer needed to enforce the portion of the gag order relating to trial witnesses, he should keep in place the provisions protecting jurors, prosecutors, court staff and their families.
The New York Police Department has logged 56 “actionable threats” since the beginning of April directed against Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, and against his family and employees, according to an affidavit provided with the filing.
Such threats, evidently made by supporters of Mr. Trump, included a post disclosing the home address of an employee at the district attorney’s office, and bomb threats made on the first day of the trial directed at two people involved in the case.
The 56 threats that were logged, prosecutors said, did not include the hundreds of “threatening emails and phone calls” that were received by Mr. Bragg’s office in recent months, which the police are “not tracking as threat cases.”
Mr. Trump was convicted on May 30 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payoff made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. The money was meant to cover up a sexual tryst she says she had with Mr. Trump in 2006, a decade before he was elected president. (Mr. Trump, 78, has continued to deny ever having had sex with Ms. Daniels.)
Mr. Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. He faces up to four years in prison, or lesser punishments like probation or home confinement.
The first American president to face — and be convicted of — criminal charges, Mr. Trump has worn the guilty verdict as a badge of honor, using it to raise money and presenting himself as a “political prisoner.”
He has also continued to voice the false theory that his prosecution was the work of a nefarious conspiracy among Democrats, including President Biden and Mr. Bragg.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
