New York’s highest court declines to hear Trump’s appeal to lift hush money gag order

MANHATTAN (CN) — New York’s highest court on Thursday declined to hear further efforts from Donald Trump to get the gag order in his hush money case lifted, meaning that the order is likely to stick at least until the former president’s sentencing in November.

“Appeal dismissed without costs, by the Court sua sponte, upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved,” New York’s Court of Appeals said in a brief order, part of a broader decisions list posted Thursday.

It’s the same reasoning the court gave Trump in June for declining to hear his appeal of the gag order then. Since that time, however, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan lifted certain restrictions on the order, allowing Trump to publicly comment on the witnesses who testified against him during the six-week trial, as well as on the Manhattan jury that convicted him.

Trump is still barred from speaking about members of the court staff, prosecutors and the family members of those involved in the case. He launched an effort earlier this summer to get the modified gag order lifted so that he can be free to publicly criticize anyone and everyone associated with his criminal conviction.

The bid was unsuccessful in a mid-level state appellate court, which ruled last month that Merchan was right to keep those portions of the gag order in place as the proceedings continue. That court cited “significant and imminent” threats that the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been receiving since Trump was convicted at the end of May.

The Thursday ruling from the New York Court of Appeals officially put to rest Trump’s latest attempt to get the order dropped ahead of his sentencing.

“President Trump will continue to fight against the unconstitutional witch hunts and gag orders perpetrated by Comrade Kamala Harris and the radical left,” Trump’s campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to Courthouse News. “The Democrats are trying to unlawfully gag President Trump, the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election, because they know that he is dominating this election, will win on November 5th, and will Make America Great Again!”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Merchan initially imposed the gag order against Trump in late March after prosecutors aired concerns about Trump’s history of attacking witnesses and lawyers in the cases against him. Trump would go on to violate the gag order 10 times. He was fined a total of $10,000 and was even threatened with jail time for his repeated breaches of the court’s order.

“As much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction … I want you to understand that I will, if necessary and appropriate,” Merchan wrote in one scathing order against Trump.

Merchan later expanded the gag order to cover his own family after Trump repeatedly attacked his daughter, a political consultant who works at a firm that supports Democrats.

Trump has since pulled back his attacks on the judge’s daughter, per the order. But his allies in Congress have picked up where he left off, repeatedly targeting her political firm Authentic with baseless accusations that it was involved in the criminal proceedings against Trump.

Last month, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Authentic, demanding that the firm turn over all company communication that “refers to the indictment, prosecution, or conviction” of Trump. Authentic holds that it has no such communications, as it had nothing to do with the trial.

A Manhattan jury in May found Trump guilty on all 34 charges of falsifying business records, crimes related to an illicit hush money scheme centered around quelling bad press during his 2016 presidential run.

The jury ruled that Trump falsely labeled invoices, ledger entries and checks as payments for standard legal fees, when in reality they were payments for hush money to keep adult film star Stormy Daniels from telling the media that she had sex with Trump 10 years prior.

Trump’s sentencing, now twice delayed, is set for Nov. 26.

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