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Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (left) (via Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images), Judge Juan Merchan (center) (AP Photo/Seth Wenig), Donald Trump speaks Tuesday April 2, 2024, at a rally in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has formally requested that Donald Trump’s hush-money trial judge hold the former president in contempt for violating the updated gag order’s prohibition of attacks on “known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses” in the case, in this instance his former attorney Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels.
Last week, Trump referred to the state witnesses for the prosecution as “sleaze bags” on Truth Social, also slamming Cohen as a “disgraced attorney and felon” who was prosecuted for “LYING.” Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) argued on Tuesday that it was clear Trump violated the gag order because his Truth Social posts “concern[ed] Cohen’s and Daniels’s participation in this criminal proceeding,” but the DA also pointed to the “timing of the posts” arising the week before trial was set to begin.
“It is no coincidence that defendant has ramped up his attacks on these two individuals just as his criminal trial is about to begin,” the DA said. “The sheer proximity of defendant’s statements to these witnesses’ forthcoming testimony establishes that his attacks are directed at their involvement in this trial.”
In support of the argument that Trump willfully violated the gag orders in three posts, Bragg directed Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s attention to what Trump’s civil fraud trial judge, Arthur Engoron, had to say after Trump violated gag orders in that case.
“In the civil-enforcement proceeding, Justice Engoron twice held defendant in civil contempt of orders prohibiting him from making public statements about court staff. Both times, Justice Engoron rejected defendant’s attempt to excuse his violations, ultimately finding that defendant’s explanations ‘ring[] hollow and untrue’ and that he had ‘intentionally violated’ the orders,” Bragg said. “This judicial finding confirms that defendant fully understands when an order prohibits him from speaking publicly about particular persons, and further understands when his public statements transgress such a directive.”
Bragg said that Trump was warned that violating the gag order would lead to sanctions and that the former president ignored that warning willfully, which the DA proposed she lead Merchan to hold Trump in criminal contempt for “disobeying a lawful mandate.”
“Defendant is not above the law, and he cannot simply disregard judicial orders that upset him. And both the public and the participants in the criminal trial deserve reassurance that the judicial system stands ready to protect them and to preserve the rule of law in the face of defendant’s extreme and deliberate provocations,” the DA said.
Bragg urged Merchan to fine Trump $1,000 dollars per violation of the gag order (there were three violations alleged), to order Trump to remove the Truth Social posts, and to warn the defendant that “future violations […] can be punished not only with additional fines, but also with a term of incarceration of up to thirty days.”
The DA insisted “[i]t is absolutely critical” that Trump’s Truth Social spree attacking witnesses “immediately halt” to “protect the integrity of the ongoing trial.”
Read the Manhattan DA’s memo here.
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