Maggie Haberman Warns Trump Attacks After Judge’s Gag Order Will Hurt Him Legally: ‘Not Good For His Cause’

New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman warned ex-President Donald Trump’s attacks on Judge Arthur Engoron’s wife — just a matter of minutes after an appellate court reinstated Engoron’s gag order — will not be good for him legally.

Judge Engoron’s gag order prohibiting Trump from attacking the court’s staff was stayed pending an appeal — until it was reinstated  Thursday in Engoron’s favor. Within minutes, Trump posted a stream of false attacks on Engoron’s wife, Dawn Marie Engoron.

On Thursday’s edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, Blitzer told Haberman about the new attacks, the timing of which Haberman had not been aware, and asked what it all means:

BLITZER: Minutes after that gag order was reinstated, as you know, Trump attacked the judge’s wife on his Truth Social site. What do you see as the significance of this?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Look, if the timing is, as you say it, as I have not seen the timing of the specific post, although I think I know which one you’re talking about, the significance would be if it was intentional that he is trying to test the bounds of what the judge said he is going to do with this gag order now that it’s back in place, which is impose it rigorously.

Now, the judge had already fined Trump once before. Trump backed off a bit after that. Once the gag was stayed while this was pending appeal, Trump went right back to attacking. And he has been saying things about the judge’s family, the judge’s wife, that the office of the court administration says flatly are just not true.

Now, Trump seems, as we have seen him do many times over, determined to try to test the boundaries of what he can get away with. He clearly wants to and also thinks this is helping him politically. It’s not going to help him legally. This is the judge who was overseeing this case. There is no jury trial because of decisions the Trump team made and it’s hard to see how this is good for Trump’s cause, but it, I think, makes him feel better.

BLITZER: Judge Engoron said today he’s aiming to issue his ruling by the end of January. And that means, of course, that we’ll learn about his decision as voters are going to the polls in the early primary states. What sort of impact do you think that could have?

HABERMAN: I think it depends. I think mostly, Wolf, considering that, yes, there are six outstanding counts that the judge has to rule on, the judge has already issued a partial summary judgment saying that there was widespread fraud conducted by Trump and his company. So, I don’t think that this changes much in terms of the actual outcome.

What does matter is the penalty phase and the judge is going to set that, and that could have some kind of effect on Trump, at minimum, psychological in terms of how he moves forward. He is pretty effective at compartmentalizing. I’m not so sure how good he would be at that. His business is under serious threat right now.

Now, will voters care about that? I don’t know but he certainly will.

BLITZER: He certainly will.

Watch above via CNN’s The Situation Room.