“Let me get this straight…”: Trump accuses judge of bowing down to Democratic daughter

Donald Trump said this Wednesday that the judge in his case in New York bowed to the interests of his daughter, a Democratic political consultant, by placing the former president under a gag order before the trial.

The Republican tycoon also criticized what he considered a misleading photo published by the judge’s daughter on social media, which showed him behind bars.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate for November, 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.

Silence order: what does it mean?

The gag order, requested by the prosecutor’s office, prohibits Trump from make or instruct others to make public statements on his behalf over jurors and potential witnesses in the trial for alleged irregular payments to a pornographic actress in 2016, scheduled to begin on April 15th.

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 worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats“earns money working to ‘catch Trump'” and recently published a fake photo on social media depicting his “obvious objective” of seeing him behind bars, the former president stressed.

For Trump, these circumstances make it “completely impossible to get a fair trial.”

“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 pornographic actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide an alleged extramarital affairpayments that Trump hid with the collaboration of his then lawyer, Michael Cohen.

In addition to the lawsuit in New York, Trump faces a lawsuit in Washington for attempt to illegally annul the results of the 2020 elections.

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.