My guess is Trump will keep on talking and the judge isn't going to throw him in the slammer (for violating the gag order). If he does, Trump's polling numbers will skyrocket.
The Dark Lord will continue to exploit his situation to his advantage.
Banning Trump from talking about his trial is blatant election interference
By Social Links forAndrew Cherkasky and Social Links forKatie Cherkasky
Published May 3, 2024, 5:09 p.m. ET
A “heckler’s veto” refers to when someone disagrees with a speaker’s message and manages to trigger events that silence the speaker.
Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order on former President Donald Trump in his hush money case and the sanctions he imposed for Trump’s alleged violation of that order are an outrageous form of that veto.
Merchan slapped Trump with thousands of dollars in sanctions and even threatened him with incarceration for future violations.
In fact, both the order and the sanctions are wildly unconstitutional.
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While the former president is on trial, with headlines blaring minute-by-minute attacks on the leading presidential candidate’s character and conduct, he is gagged from defending himself in the public eye.
Polling suggests the trial could be the deciding factor in November, yet he can’t talk about it.
The Supreme Court has held that a “candidate, no less than any other person, has a First Amendment right to engage in the discussion of public issues and vigorously and tirelessly to advocate his own election.”
The court also ruled that “even a short-lived ‘gag’ order in a case of widespread concern to the community constitutes a substantial prior restraint and causes irreparable injury to First Amendment interests as long as it remains in effect.”
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The former president was recently fined $9,000 for violating a court-issued gag order.
Perhaps most aptly, it has noted that “the First Amendment ‘has its fullest and most urgent application’ to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.”
Nor can speech restrictions be unlawfully vague, such that an individual subject to them can’t reasonably figure out what’s prohibited.
Against those standards, Merchan’s constitutional abuses are glaring.
The order prohibits statements, for example, about witnesses concerning their potential “participation” in the proceedings.
But Merchan uses the word “participation” broadly, not just to ban unlawful intimidation or retaliation but to include essentially any reference to witnesses at all, even when criticizing their credibility.
Trump can’t even tell the electorate why testimony against him shouldn’t be believed — while the witnesses have free rein to espouse endless theories on social media and in the press as to why he’s guilty.
Laws already prohibit witness and jury intimidation and obstruction of justice. But here, the judge created a far more expansive limit on speech using vague terms like “participation.”
The order also bans Trump from talking about Merchan’s family if those statements are made with an “intent to interfere with the judge’s work,” though the ex-prez can comment on Merchan himself.
That’s beyond the scope allowed by the DC Circuit Court, which ruled on Trump’s bid to nix a gag order in his DC case.
The DC court upheld prohibitions on commentary only about court staff and their families, not about the judge himself or his family.
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Merchan’s expansion of that exposes his own bias, because he is covering up his family’s political ties to the public. (His daughter’s firm has worked extensively with Democratic candidates.)
The judge is effectively saying he can withstand personal attacks by Trump and remain fair, but if Trump were to mention his daughter’s political activity or any concerns about the judge’s neutrality, this would apparently affect the judge’s ability to “work.”
Really? If that’s the case, why is Merchan still sitting on this case at all?
Even more ridiculous, while Trump was slapped with sanctions for commenting on Michael Cohen’s dubious credibility, Cohen has run a media machine mocking Trump and rallying for his conviction, with nightly livestreams, even featuring a Trump impersonator.
Gag orders are not typically aimed at a criminal defendant’s right to comment generally in the public.
Instead, they’re meant to keep specific information — witness and juror names, medical records, confidential government sources — private.
Not only can Cohen run his mouth, the entire news industry can continue to run wall-to-wall coverage with legal analysts like us tearing apart every aspect of the case, without input from Trump.
We haven’t been able to find a single comparable case where everyone but the defendant was permitted to freely comment on the evidence.
There’s nothing ordinary about this gag order.
Every day we get closer to the election, Trump’s interest in his right to speech is heightened.
The opinions of the electorate are being shaped with constant media coverage merely months before they cast their votes.
Trump repeatedly sought delay of the trial until after the election, but the prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, opposed that.
Holding a trial at the height of the campaign season means doing so when Trump’s First Amendment rights are at their peak.
As the trial continues, Trump and his spokespeople must be free to comment on it and its fairness without limitations other than those already found in the law.
The presidency may depend upon it.
Andrew Cherkasky (@CherkaskyLaw) and Katie Cherkasky (@CherkaskyKatie) are military veterans, former federal prosecutors and current criminal defense attorneys. They are authors of the new book, “Woke Warriors.”