Donald Trump on Wednesday attacked the New York judge who placed him under a gag order before the former president’s trial and suggested that the judge bowed to the interests of his daughter, a Democratic political consultant.
The Republican tycoon criticized, in particular, what he considered a misleading photo published by the judge’s daughter on social media, which showed him behind bars.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, posted on social media that the gag order issued on Tuesday was “illegal, un-American, unconstitutional.”
The Republican said that Judge Juan M. Merchan was “unjustly trying” to deprive him of his First Amendment right to “speak openly against ‘weapons.’ [weaponization, em inglês] of law enforcement” by Democratic rivals.
The gag order, requested by the prosecutor’s office, prohibits Trump from making or instructing others to make public statements on his behalf about jurors and potential witnesses in the trial for alleged irregular payments to a pornographic actress in 2016, scheduled to begin on 15 December. April.
It also prohibits any statements intended to interfere with or harass court employees, the Public Prosecutor’s Office team or their families, reported the Associated Press (AP).
The gag order does not prohibit comments about Merchan or his family, nor does it prohibit criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat whose office is prosecuting Trump.
Merchan’s daughter, whose company has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats, “makes money working to ‘get Trump'” and recently posted a fake photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him. him behind bars, stressed the former president.
For Trump, these circumstances make it “completely impossible to get a fair trial.”
Trump did not post a ‘link’ to the alleged photo, but an account appearing to belong to Loren Merchan on X, formerly Twitter, this morning showed a photo illustration of an arrested Trump as his profile picture. It was later changed. Loren Merchan’s consulting company had linked this same account in a previous post on social media.
“So let me get this straight (…) the judge’s daughter is allowed to publish photos of her ‘dream’ of putting me in prison… but I am not allowed to talk about the attacks on me, and [sobre] the Lunatics who are trying to destroy my life and prevent me from winning the 2024 presidential elections, which I am dominating?”, asked Trump on his social network, Truth Social.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged the former president with 34 crimes related to the $130,000 he paid to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide an alleged extramarital affair, payments that Trump hid with the collaboration of the then lawyer in height, Michael Cohen.
In addition to the lawsuit in New York, Trump faces a lawsuit in Washington for attempting to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The trial in Florida is also scheduled for May 20, in which Trump is accused of having illegally stored confidential material in his mansion in Mar-a-Lago.
There is also the case in which the Fulton County Prosecutor’s Office (Georgia) accuses Trump of trying to subvert the 2020 election results in that state.
