Donald Trump speaks to reporters outside of his civil fraud trial in New York.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Trump’s first-ever gag order was issued two months ago at his NY fraud trial.Since then, appellate judges have briefly lifted, then reinstated the gag.Trump now hopes to ask NY’s highest court to lift the ‘unconstitutional’ gag once more.
Over the past two months, Donald Trump’s New York gag order — barring him from statements involving the judge’s legal staff for his ongoing fraud trial — has been on, off, and on again, where it now remains.
Bright and early Monday, his lawyers began an effort to appeal to the state’s highest court, arguing, “The ongoing injuries caused by the unconstitutional Gag Orders to the free-speech rights of President Trump and tens of millions of Americans are incalculable.”
The gag is more precisely a partial gag. It lets Trump say almost anything he wants to about the trial. It even lets him attack the judge presiding over the non-jury trial, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.
But it prevents Trump from making public statements about anyone on the law staff of Engoron, who first put the gag in place on October 3, just the second day of trial.
The gag was prompted by Trump’s heated, sometimes false attacks, both online and directly to press covering the trial, that focused on Engoron’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield.
The gag, initially on Trump only, was expanded a month later to his lawyers, who cannot comment on the confidential communications between the judge and his legal staffers.
Trump has been fined $15,000 after twice violating the gag. In the months since Trump singled Greenfield out by name and photo, the judge and staffers, particularly Greenfield, have been flooded with threatening emails and phone calls by Trump supporters, the state court system has reported.
Trump has also fought hard against his other gag order, the one issued in his federal election interference case in Washington, DC, barring him from attacking potential witnesses.
The lawyers filed Monday’s do-over appeal request with a Manhattan appellate court in the morning. The papers ask for the appellate court’s “expedited” permission to kick the gag up to the New York Court of Appeals in Albany, where they hope the it will come off for good.
An appeal to Albany could only happen if the lower appellate court in Manhattan gives its OK. Trump’s effort — essentially a 33-page “mother, may I?” — asks the lower appellate court to make its decision by Wednesday.
A speedy decision kicking things up to Albany would prevent “a grave Constitutional deprivation,” Trump’s filing argued.
“Petitioners respectfully request that this Court grant immediate leave to appeal,” Trump lawyer Clifford Robert wrote.
“Expedited review by the Court of Appeals is vital to Petitioners’ rights and interests and necessary to redress Justice Engoron’s ongoing violations of the United States Constitution, the Judiciary Law, and the Rules of this Court,” it said.
“Without expedited review,” Trump’s lawyers go on to tell the Manhattan appeals court, “Petitioners will continue to suffer irreparable injury daily, as they are silenced on matters implicating the appearance of bias and impropriety on the bench during a trial of immense stakes.”
Trump’s side has claimed in public statements and legal documents that Greenfield is improperly “co-judging” the trial, a claim made without evidence, beyond that the judge and clerk, who sit side by side, occasionally confer quietly on the bench during the trial.
