New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan forbade Trump from speaking publicly about line prosecutors and court staff—or even their family members.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s upcoming hush money trial in New York hit the former president with a gag order on Tuesday, just one day after Trump peddled a conspiracy theory about a prosecutor—and hours after the tycoon levied attacks against the judge’s daughter.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan forbade Trump from speaking publicly about line prosecutors and court staff—or even their family members.
According to The Daily Beast, the judge also subjected Trump to the same sorts of precautionary warnings the former president has faced from other judges in separate cases, ordering him to not even mention any prospective jurors.
However, a person familiar with the Trump team’s internal discussions told The Daily Beast they believe the gag order does not extend to the judge’s daughter. Merchan’s order only mentions the family members of “court staff.”
The snap decision was made on the heels of Trump’s anger-laden press conference earlier at his 40 Wall Street building in downtown Manhattan, where the former president lashed out after suffering a minor loss in court when Merchan set his criminal trial—Trump’s first-ever—to start on April 15.
When answering reporter’s questions, Trump attacked lead prosecutor Matt Colangelo, an unelected assistant district attorney for New York County.
Colangelo worked on investigations against Trump while at the New York Attorney General’s Office, then did a brief stint at the Department of Justice, only to return to the city to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s current case against Trump.
The former president seized on those details to surmise—without any proof— that Colangelo was somehow sent by President Biden, Trump’s 2024 presidential rival, to bolster the local DA’s case.
The outlandish claim was a continuation of Trump’s long-espoused view that any law enforcement action against him is part of a shadowy “deep state” seeking to keep him from power.
Then on Tuesday morning, Trump shifted his followers’ focus to the judge himself—drawing attention to the judge’s own daughter.
“Judge Juan Merchan, a very distinguished looking man, is nevertheless a true and certified Trump Hater who suffers from a very serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In other words, he hates me! His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam “Shifty” Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, (Dem) Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted on his Truth Social media site.
This type of judicial decree is rare and seen as heavy-handed in a regular case, but Trump’s incessant attacks on the judicial system and his ability to rally his MAGA supporters have proven to be a unique threat that has flooded government offices with violent threats in the past two years.
In a separate matter in January, the final day of Trump’s three-month bank fraud trial was nearly derailed when a bomb threat was made targeting the home of Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who had overseen that case.
Earlier, Trump loyalists left menacing phone calls at his chambers threatening physical violence against the judge and his law clerk, the attorney Allison Greenfield.
In the Manhattan District Attorney’s ongoing case against Trump, the former president has been launching personal attacks against DA Alvin Bragg Jr. from even before the moment a grand jury indicted him for faking business records in a scheme to cover up a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump infamously posted a doctored photo of himself wielding a bat while standing ominously behind the DA, an image that was widely interpreted as intimidation.
Early on in the DA’s case, Justice Merchan took on a measured tone in court when he cautioned Trump’s lawyers against taking any actions that could be perceived as intimidating.
He also strictly limited what the former president’s legal defense team could do with the information contained in the thousands of pages it received as evidence from the DA’s office, blocking defense lawyers from leaking any details that could compromise the case or lead to attacks against witnesses.
Merchan’s warnings grew more stern in the weeks that followed, as Trump began publicly speaking about the judge’s daughter. However, the judge did not punish Trump at the time, opting instead to continue cautioning against heated rhetoric.
NBC News reported on Wednesday that less than 24 hours after getting hit with a partial gag order in the New York criminal case involving his alleged falsification of business records, former President Donald Trump repeatedly lashed out at one person who's not covered by the ruling — the judge.
On his social media platform, Trump called Judge Juan Merchan “biased and conflicted” while also taking aim at the judge’s daughter for a social media post that a court spokesperson said was wrongly attributed to her.
In a ruling Tuesday, Merchan noted the impending April 15 trial date and said Trump must "refrain" from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation” in the case, as well as about individual prosecutors and court staff and their family members.
The order did not mention the judge and his family members — a loophole Trump exploited Wednesday.