Judges Slaps Gag Order On Trump’s Lawyers Over Jabs at His Clerk

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers were placed under a partial gag order on Friday by Justice Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York.

Engoron barred all of Trump’s defense team from making any further comments regarding the judge’s communications with his staff.

“The First Amendment right of defendants and their attorneys to comment on my staff is far and away outweighed by the need to protect them from threats and physical harm,” Engoron wrote. The order came “after defense lawyers made repeated objections about the working relationship between him and his principal law clerk, including suggestions that she was biased. Trump himself has also accused her of bias,” reported Reuters.

Engoron added in his court order that Trump’s lawyers have been “falsely accusing her of bias against them and of improperly influencing the ongoing bench trial” — referring to his law clerk. Trump had a partial gag order placed on him for previously attacking the clerk and sharing both her name and private Instagram account to his Truth Social platform, inviting his followers to attack her online.

Trump was later fined by the judge for failing to remove the post attacking his clerk from his campaign website, although he had deleted it from Truth Social.

“Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions,” Engoron wrote in a court filing after levying the fine.

Trump is currently on trial in New York City to determine the penalties related to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil suit against Trump, his company, and his adult sons. James alleges that Trump committed fraud by falsely inflating his assets for well over a decade. Engoron has already found Trump liable for the fraud in a summary ruling and the trial is ongoing to determine penalties.

James is seeking a $250 million fine and to bar Trump and his sons from doing business in the state of New York, which would effectively dissolve his company and force the sale of several of his highly indebted assets.

Trump’s targeting of judges, prosecutors, and other involved in his ongoing legal cases have stirred intense debate and controversy as in most legal proceedings defendants are explicitly barred from publicly intimidating officers of the court. In his DC federal elections case, Trump is also now under a partial gag order, barring him from further attacks on prosecutors or attempting to intimidate potential witnesses.