According to reports including details shared online by legal analyst Norm Eisen, New York Judge Juan Merchan — known in local legal parlance as a Justice — set the record straight on Friday after incendiary claims from defendant Donald Trump the previous day.
“BREAKING: Judge corrects Trump for lying outside court yesterday,” Eisen posted on social media. “Trump said gag order prevented him from testifying[.] Judge: you have an absolute right to testify at trial or not & gag order has nothing to do with it[.] Merchan is not tolerating Trump’s disinfo campaign!”
The gag order to which Merchan and Eisen’s post were referring was imposed by the judge himself, who is presiding over the ongoing criminal trial against Trump on allegations of falsifying business records in connection to hush money from before the 2016 elections. The funds were for a woman named Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with Trump, and Trump is charged with falsifying records of repayments to Michael Cohen, a former ally of Donald’s who was the source for Daniels’ funds. Cohen was separately prosecuted in a federal case on campaign finance law violations on the idea that the hush money arrangements constituted a covert boost to Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Merchan’s directives protect witnesses, jurors, and others amid lingering concerns about a possibility of threats connected to angry rhetoric from Trump. Trump, basically, was trying to characterize attacks that would be covered by the order as essential to an effective defense. The judge recently held Trump in contempt, concluding he’d violated the order nine times and expressing openness to a possibility of jailing Trump if circumstances — in this area specifically — further develop. Merchan already imposed the maximum financial penalties for those violations, but that total was just $9,000, which the judge acknowledged wasn’t necessarily poised for the same impact if a violating defendant was personally wealthy.
