New York’s top court refused to hear former President Donald Trump’s gag order appeal on Tuesday, which means that, despite his case being over, the order from the pro-Biden judge, Juan Merchan, preventing him to speak about his “sham” trial will remain in place for the upcoming presidential debate with Joe Biden.
Trump’s attorneys had filed a notice of appeal with the state’s high court in May. They argued the gag order restricted Trump’s “core political speech on matters of central importance at the height of his Presidential campaign.”
The court, however, disagreed, saying there was no First Amendment case to be heard.
Fox News legal expert Jonathan Turley explained that the gag order appears to be exactly what the public thinks it is: an attempt to keep Trump from talking about the case while Biden calls him a felon over and over again.
“You have a local New York judge effectively limiting what the leading presidential candidate can say in the months leading up to an election,” Jonathan Turley, practicing defense attorney and law professor, told Fox News Digital.
“The continuation of the gag order seems untethered from any compelling rationale, particularly in light of the election,” he said.
Turley noted that appellate courts are generally “highly deferential” to courtroom management-type issues like the imposition and continuation of gag orders, but he said it is “deeply concerning that Judge Merchan would continue a gag order long after the verdict has been reached and the jury dismissed the case.”
“Putting aside the questionable value of the continuation of the gag order, in this case, Judge Merchan is ignoring the countervailing cost for the political system,” Turley added.
During the trial, Merchan slapped Trump with $9000 in fines for violating the gag order.
Biden has seen the Manhattan “hush money trial” as a chance to attack Trump, which seemed like the plan from the Democrats practicing “lawfare” all along.
Even some liberals have slammed the trial and the verdict against the former president. A former Democratic district attorney, Elie Honig, for example, has said that “the charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.”
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