Government

NY Gag Order Back In Effect As Trump Moves On To Targeting Judge's Family

Troll storm as legal strategy.

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(Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump’s New York gag order is back in effect today after a four-judge panel from the First Judicial Department ended the interim stay imposed last week by Associate Justice David Friedman in light of the “constitutional and statutory rights at issue.”

The order was imposed on October 3, the second day of the civil fraud trial of the former president’s family and their eponymous business, after a social media post in which Trump falsely described Justice Arthur Engoron’s law clerk as Senator Chuck Schumer’s “girlfriend.”

After a conference in chambers where Trump’s lawyers apologized and promised to rein in their client, Trump twice violated the order, incurring fines of $15,000 in total. Their client’s inability to restrain himself appears to have prompted a shift in strategy from Trump’s attorneys Chris Kise, Alina Habba, and Cliff Roberts, who have made attacks on the clerk a central feature of their defense. Indeed they appear to have coordinated their in-court whining on October 25 specifically so that they could point to it in a November 15 motion for a mistrial based on the theory that the law clerk (and Above the Law) was mean them.

In fact, the lawyers were so aggressive about hounding this poor woman that Justice Engoron gagged them as well on November 3.

With the order stayed, Trump resumed his filthy attacks on the clerk, even as an officer in the court’s Department of Public Safety submitted an affidavit attesting that the clerk is receiving more than 50 harassing messages a day, many of them antisemitic. In response, Kise, Habba, and Roberts submitted an execrable motion in defense of the stay arguing, essentially that THE BITCH DESERVES IT.

This logic does not appear to have prevailed with Justices Manzanet-Daniels, Gesmer, Scarpulla, and Rosado, who issued a per curiam order this morning reinstating the gag.

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“Now, upon reading and filing the papers with respect to the motion, and due deliberation having been had thereon, It is ordered that the motion is denied; the interim relief granted by order of a Justice of this Court, dated November 16, 2023, is hereby vacated,” they wrote, offering no further analysis.

“I intend to enforce the gag orders rigorously and vigorously, and I want to make sure that counsel informs their clients of the fact that the stay was vacated,” Justice Engoron said in court this morning, according to The Messenger’s Adam Klasfeld.

Kise responded by bemoaning this “tragic day for the rule of law,” later complaining to reporters that it is “Hard to imagine a more unfair process and hard to believe this is happening in America.”

Meanwhile, Trump has moved on to attacking Justice Engoron’s wife and son on social media. We’re not linking or screenshotting, but it seems pretty likely that Special Counsel Jack Smith is as he dashes off a notice of supplemental authority to the DC Circuit as it ponders the propriety of the stayed gag order in the election interference case.

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes the Law and Chaos substack and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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