MANHATTAN (CN) — The judge in Donald Trump’s ongoing civil fraud case revealed on Wednesday some of the vulgar, threatening and antisemitic messages his office received after Trump's relentless and personal social media attacks.
Judge Arthur Engoron is attempting to have a pair of gag orders reinstated that would prevent Trump and other parties from attacking his staff publicly. He previously claimed his office was “inundated with hundreds of harassing” messages after Trump attacked his chief law clerk on social media — the reason for the gag orders in the first place.
On Wednesday, Engoron’s attorneys revealed the contents of some of those profanity-laden messages, which ranged from crude and bigoted to downright chilling.
“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 an affidavit from court officer Captain Charles Hollon.
In the affidavit attached to Engoron’s filing, Hollon outlined the safety concerns Engoron and his staff face due to Trump’s unwavering and derogatory social media posts. The threats are serious, he claims “not hypothetical or speculative.”
“Resign now, you dirty, treasonous piece of trash snake,” another voicemail said. “We are going to get you and anyone of you dirty, backstabbing, lying, cheating American. You are nothing but a bunch of communists. We are coming to remove you permanently.”
The document included the transcripts of seven voicemails left for Engoron’s office, most of them heavily redacted for vulgarity. But the affidavit claims that more than 275 single-spaced pages of these threatening transcriptions exist.
Engoron issued a gag order against Trump in October after the former president posted a disparaging message to social media about the judge’s chief law clerk Allison Greenfield, on just the second day of the trial. Earlier this month Engoron issued an additional gag order extending to attorneys, after Trump’s lawyers repeatedly attacked Greenfield in open court.
The orders barred only public comments about members of Engoron’s staff, not those about the judge himself, but an appeals court paused the orders last week, finding merit to the “constitutional and statutory rights” concerns raised by Trump’s attorneys.
Sharing the contents of the voicemails is part of Engoron's attempt to convince the appeals court to reinstate the gag orders. The affidavit claims that his law clerk now experiences “daily doxing” after Trump attacked her on social media back in October.
“Ms. Greenfield’s personal information, including her personal cell phone number and personal email addresses also have been compromised resulting in daily doxing,” Hollon wrote in his letter.
“She has been subjected to, on a daily basis, harassing, disparaging comments and antisemitic tropes. I have been informed by Ms. Greenfield that she has been receiving approximately 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and approximately 30-50 messages per day.”
Hollon asserts that the gag orders worked when they were enacted — until Trump violated them.
“The implementation of the limited gag orders resulted in a decrease in the number of threats, harassment, and disparaging messages that the judge and his staff received,” Hollon wrote. “However, when Mr. Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased.”
The threats are becoming a strain on court security, Hollon claims; harassment has forced his staff to “constantly reassess and evaluate what security protections to put in place to ensure the safety of the judge and those around him.”
Since its enactment on Oct. 3, Trump has twice violated his gag order and has been fined a total of $15,000 as a result, pending the appellate court ruling.
Engoron is overseeing the bench trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million fraud case against Trump and his co-defendants, set to conclude in mid-December. The state accuses Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Jr., the Trump Organization and the company’s former finance chief Allen Weisselberg of fraudulently inflating financial statements to short banks and insurers out of millions of dollars.
Follow @Uebey
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
GOP sues Nevada over late mail-in ballots May 3, 2024
