Early Tuesday, ex-President Donald Trump faced a court hearing on alleged violations of his gag order imposed in a New York City criminal case accusing him of falsifying business records.
It didn’t go well for his defense team. In a choice exchange reported by legal journalist Adam Klasfeld, presiding Judge Juan Merchan told Trump lawyer Todd Blanche that the ex-president’s team member was tearing apart his own credibility in the name of strained claims that Trump was actually working to comply with the judge’s directives.
“President Trump is being very careful to comply” with the gag order, Blanche claimed to Merchan. The judge wasn’t impressed. “Mr. Blanche, you are losing all credibility,” Merchan told Blanche. And that credibility is going to be important for defense pushes possible in the future as this trial moves forward.
According to Klasfeld, Merchan wasn’t immediately issuing his ultimate decision in the dispute, amid which prosecutors were seeking financial penalties. “Merchan says he’s going to “reserve decision on this,” after brutal arguments for the defense,” the journalist shared on X, the site formerly called Twitter.
Trump’s alleged violations of the gag order have been incessant, from posts on social media to in-person comments around his actual appearance at the courthouse. Just this Monday, Trump complained to the media as court wrapped up for the day about expected trial witness Michael Cohen, a former “fixer” for the ex-president who was involved in the hush money arrangements that formed the backdrop for this criminal case against Trump. Prosecutors brought up the Trump comments about Cohen on Tuesday.
