Judge Warns Trump to His Face to Stop Inciting Violence Or He Could Face Gag Order
During former President Donald Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday, in which he was charged with 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records for hush money payments, Judge Juan Merchan said he would not issue a gag order at this time, but warned Trump not to incite violence.
Fox News’s Bryan Llenas interviewed Fox legal producer Jake Gibson, who was in the courtroom during the arraignment, about some of the details regarding the proceedings.
“Mr. Trump walked in. President former President Trump walked in. He seemed to have a bit of a swagger. He certainly looked stoic. He looked stone-faced,” Gibson began, adding:
He pleaded not guilty, said not guilty. And at some point, the prosecution brought up all of the social media posts that he has put out recently, including the one where he’s holding a bat next to D.A. [Alvin] Bragg.
And the prosecution said this is, you know, could be looked at as inciting violence. And they wanted Judge Merchan to, it seemed like they wanted him to give a gag order.
Judge Merchan said that, ‘no, he wouldn’t give a gag order.’ But he said to Mr. Trump and to his attorneys, ‘I don’t want to see this anymore.’ I don’t want to see, the next time that I see something like this, I might have a different idea about what I should do.
His attorney said that, look, this case has been, they’ve been investigating this for three years. There’s been selective leaks that are harming former President Trump. And it’s unthinkable that he wouldn’t be allowed to defend himself. That is their way of justifying his posts. The judge said that he didn’t that he wasn’t sure that that justified, you know, if he was inciting violence.
CNN’s Kara Scannell echoed Gibson’s statements, reporting that the judge warned Trump not to make any statements against officials that could incite violence.
NBC News’s Adam Reiss also relayed what he heard while in the courtroom and detailed some of the prosecution’s statements regarding a potential gag order.
“The prosecutor went on to say that Mr. Trump has made recent threatening emails and speeches both directed at New York City, the courts here in New York, the justice system and the district attorney’s office. He said that these are irresponsible social media posts that threaten death and destruction and even World War III,” Reiss said while calling into MSNBC.
“He said that these public statements to the district attorney, which included a photo of him swinging a baseball bat towards the district attorney’s head, was very concerning. They’re concerned about this and what effect it will have on potential jurors and witnesses. But they said that this will not dissipate the office,” Reiss concluded.
NBC News also added a bit of interesting color to the judge’s interactions with Trump. MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin relayed the report, which said, “In court, Trump showed no discernible emotion. He did, however, noticeably sigh when the judge warned he could be removed if he was disruptive. Trump sighed, and said, ‘I know.'”
In the weeks since Trump announced he would be arrested on social media, the former president has viciously attacked Bragg and the judge.
Trump shared a link with a split-screen image of him holding a bat on one side with an image of Bragg’s head on the right, which many critics dubbed an explicit threat.
The Drudge Report’s headline on the post read, “PSYCHO DON!”
“THREATENS MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY,” read the second line of the headline. Trump had also been roundly condemned as racist for calling Bragg a “SOROS BACKED ANIMAL.”
Tuesday after the arraignment, Donald Trump, Jr. posted to Truth Social a photo of the judge’s daughter and an attack linking her to the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020.
Watch the full clip above via Fox News.
