MANHATTAN (CN) — The gag orders are active again in Donald Trump’s $250 million civil fraud trial, thanks to an appellate ruling Thursday from a panel of New York judges.
In a two-page decision from a panel that included justices Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, Ellen Gesmer, Saliann Scarpulla and Llinét M. Rosado, Trump’s request to lift the enforcement of the gag orders was denied.
Earlier this month, Trump’s lawyers moved to freeze the orders that prevented parties and attorneys from attacking members of Judge Arthur Engoron’s staff. Associate Justice David Friedman obliged, citing “constitutional and statutory rights” concerns in his temporary stay of the orders.
Engoron addressed the reinstatement of his gag orders in front of the court on Thursday.
“I intend to enforce the gag orders rigorously and vigorously and I want to make sure counsel inform their clients,” the judge said.
“We’re aware,” said lead Trump lawyer Chris Kise. “It’s a tragic day for the rule of law, but we are aware.”
“It is what it is,” Engoron said.
Engoron issued the gag orders earlier in the case after Trump repeatedly attacked his chief law clerk on social media. Since then, Engoron said his office has been inundated with threats and harassment that worsened when the orders were violated or paused.
He shared the contents in some of those threats last week in an affidavit, which included transcriptions from voicemails to his office that ranged from disturbing to offensive and anti semitic.
“Trust me. Trust me when I say this. I will come for you. I don’t care. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me either,” one voicemail said, according to the affidavit from court officer Captain Charles Hollon.
The gag orders apply to all parties and attorneys in the case, but Trump is the only one to violate them so far. Trump twice breached the court’s orders while they were active — once after Engoron discovered the initial disparaging social media post was still live on Trump’s campaign website, and again after Trump made an ambiguous media comment about someone seated “beside” the judge.
Trump has been fined a total of $15,000 as result of his violations.
The former president ramped up his attacks during the two weeks that the gag orders were lifted. In a number of posts to Truth Social, Trump berated Engoron’s law clerk by name, calling her “corrupt” and suggesting she is out to turn the judge further against him.
“[Engoron] used his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield, to sit by his side on the ‘Bench’ & tell him what to do,” Trump said in one post on Thanksgiving.
Trump takes aim at Engoron’s wife for tweets she didn’t post
With the gag order reinstated, Trump has already shifted his sights to the judge’s wife Dawn Engoron, whom the former president called “Trump-hating” in a Thursday morning post to Truth Social. He spent the day attacking her for tweeting anti-Trump memes under the pseudonym “Dawn Marie.”
“This is the Judge’s Wife and Family that are putting these things out,” Trump said in a Thursday Truth Social post, attaching screenshots from Dawn Engoron’s supposed account. “I am not entitled to a Jury under this Statute. Can this be happening in America? This is the most unfair Trial in the History of New York, and I’ve had some pretty unfair Trials!”
But the Dawn Marie account doesn’t belong to Dawn Engoron at all, according to Al Baker, spokesman for New York's Office of Court Administration.
“Justice Engoron’s wife has not sent social media posts regarding the former president,” Baker wrote in a statement to Courthouse News. “They are not hers. She does not have an X, formerly Twitter, account.”
Dawn Engoron herself has also denied any involvement with the account in numerous reports.
Judge Engoron has yet to comment on the claims Trump has been making about his wife. Despite their inaccuracy, Trump’s posts don’t violate the court’s gag orders; those protect only Judge Engoron’s staff, not his family, from public comments.
Before trial even began in October, Judge Engoron found Trump and his co-defendants liable for fraud in the attorney general’s case against them.
The end of the trial is near. Donald Trump, the final witness for the defense, is expected to be called back to the stand on Dec. 11. Engoron announced Thursday that both sides will then submit final briefs by Jan. 5, 2024, and deliver closing arguments on Jan. 11.
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