Manhattan prosecutors on Monday asked the judge presiding in Donald Trump’s criminal case on charges of falsifying business records to impose a gag order on the former president, seeking to bar him from attacking potential witnesses and revealing juror identities.
The request, submitted by prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, repeatedly referenced the gag order imposed in Trump’s federal criminal trial in Washington to ask for similar limitations on what he can publicly say about the case.
“[The] defendant has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks,” the 30-page filing said. “Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from the defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding.”
The proposed gag order hewed closely to the contours of the order upheld in December by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit that decided Trump’s inflammatory statements in the federal election interference case could not remain unrestricted, despite his objections.
Prosecutors asked the New York judge Juan Merchan to limit Trump from assailing people in three categories: known or foreseeable witnesses concerning their trial testimony; court staff and the district attorney’s staff as well as their families; and any prospective jurors.
The filing made extensive use of Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform decrying the criminal cases in their filing, notably including a post that Trump published in March last year when he erroneously predicted he would be arrested in connection with the business records case.
“THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” Trump had written in a post attached as an exhibit. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
The filing also drew direct lines from Trump’s inflammatory statements about the case to actions taken by his followers, arguing that immediately after that post in particular, the district attorney’s office received its first threat – even before Trump was formally charged.
Trump’s lawyers are likely to oppose the gag order and could appeal it should Merchan agree with prosecutors. Still, if Merchan were to impose a gag order, he would be the latest in a string of judges in federal and state courts restricting Trump’s most acerbic remarks.
The gag order request comes weeks before Trump is scheduled for trial in the Manhattan criminal case on 25 March. Last year, the district attorney’s office charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
Prosecutors have cast the case as an attempt by Trump to manipulate the 2016 election, arguing Trump paid $130,000 to buy Daniels’ silence about the affair because he was supposedly concerned about damaging his presidential campaign.
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The charges hinge on how the hush money was recorded on Trump’s business records. Trump falsified the records, prosecutors allege, by recording the reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen – who made the payment to Daniels – as “legal expenses” from a “retainer agreement”.
To make their case, prosecutors asked the judge in a separate filing on Monday to allow them to introduce ancillary evidence at trial related to their 2016 election interference theory, including other hush-money payments Trump made in advance of the 2016 election.
They also asked the judge to allow them to use the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump boasted about groping women, which came shortly before Trump made the hush-money payment to Daniels.
Trump’s lawyers pushed back at prosecutors in their own filing, asking the judge to exclude evidence about the 2016 election because it was irrelevant to the actual business records allegations. They also asked Cohen to be barred from testifying because he had previously made misstatements.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
