A New York judge partially lifted a gag order on Donald Trump following his conviction on criminal charges stemming from an effort to influence the 2016 election by buying a porn star’s silence. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

A New York judge partially lifted a gag order on Donald Trump on Tuesday following the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction on criminal charges stemming from an effort to influence the 2016 election by buying a porn star’s silence. The revised order now allows Trump to speak publicly about witnesses in the case and removes a prohibition on his commenting about the jury, but keeps in place restrictions on his statements about individual prosecutors and others involved in the case.

A separate order restricting Trump or anyone else from identifying members of the anonymous jury remains in effect, according to Tuesday’s order from Justice Juan Merchan. Trump’s lawyers argued the gag order was stifling his campaign speech and said it might limit his ability to respond to attacks from Democratic President Joe Biden during their forthcoming debate on Thursday.

Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said limits on Trump’s speech about trial witnesses were no longer needed. But they urged Merchan to keep in place restrictions on his comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors, citing risks to their safety.

In the first criminal trial of a U.S. president, a Manhattan jury on May 30 found Trump guilty of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public before the 2016 election with her story of a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump, elected to a four-year term that year, denies the alleged 2006 encounter and has vowed to appeal his conviction. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before his party convenes to formally nominate him to challenge Biden for president ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Merchan imposed the gag order before the trial began in April, finding that Trump’s history of threatening statements posed a risk of derailing the proceedings. The judge fined Trump $10,000 for violations of the order during the seven-week trial and warned him on May 6 that he would be jailed if he ran afoul of the order again.

In arguing some restrictions were still needed, prosecutors said Trump’s supporters had attempted to identify members of the anonymous jury and threatened violence against them. “There thus remains a critical need to protect the jurors in this case from attacks by defendant and those he inspires to action,” they wrote in a June 20 court filing.

Defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove in a June 11 court filing argued that holding Trump accountable for “harassing communications” by “independent third parties” violated his right to free speech.

They said Trump’s political opponents were using the restrictions as a “political sword.” They also said Trump was unable to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels, who testified on behalf of the prosecution at trial.

The order does not prevent Trump from criticizing the case or from speaking about Merchan and Bragg.

Former President Donald Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanche, speaks to reporters following the day’s proceedings in his trial on May 7, 2024, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump returns to his hush money trial on May 7 facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors gear up to summon big-name witnesses in the final weeks of the case.

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who has said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, and Michael Cohen, the former lawyer of Mr. Trump and personal fixer who prosecutors say paid her to keep silent in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, are among those who have yet to take the stand but are expected to in the coming weeks.

The jury on May 6 heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organisation controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.

The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Mr. Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Mr. Cohen to Ms. Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Mr. Cohen received.

Mr. McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Mr. Trump’s account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony May 6 showing that Mr. Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.

Mr. McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Mr. Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organisation accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Mr. Trump himself.

“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Mr. Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.

”Correct,” Ms. Tarasoff replied.

The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Mr. Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.

The $1,000 fine imposed May 6 marks the second time since the trial began last month that Mr. Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Mr. Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom. Mr. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

Mr. Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Mr. Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.

Yet even as Mr. Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”

“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Mr. Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Mr. Trump criticised the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.

Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defence attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial, the first of his four criminal cases to come before a jury, is expected to last another month or more.