'Imminent threat': Judge urged to hit Trump with yet another gag order
Pointing to his “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks” about his legal cases, New York prosecutors in Donald Trump's hush money criminal case asked Monday for a gag order to be imposed on the former president.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has requested that Trump be barred from making statements about potential witnesses, prospective jurors and prosectors related to the case, the Associated Press reported.
The judge overseeing the case, Juan Manuel Merchan, has not yet issued a ruling on the request.
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As the AP points out, Trump was already issued a gag order in his D.C. election interference case back in October — an order that has largely been upheld by a federal appeals panel, though it minimized the speech restrictions, saying Trump was allowed to criticize the special counsel who brought the case.
He was also subject to a gag order controlling he said about Judge Arthur Engoron's staff in the New York fraud case. That order was put in place after repeated attacks on Engoron's court clerk, and was upheld on appeal.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts in Bragg case, which involves hush money allegedly paid to adult move actress Stormy Daniels in an attempt to keep an affair the two had quiet.
In several social media posts, Trump has already attacked Bragg and Merchan, as well as witnesses including his former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen.
"[Trump] has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him, including jurors, witnesses, lawyers and court staff," prosecutors said in their filing, adding that Trump's remarks "pose a significant and imminent threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding."