Donald Trump has been hit with a protective order in the criminal case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. That represents a win for the prosecution, which had most of its previous requests to muzzle the former president granted.
(Related: Legal Experts Across the Political Spectrum Are Laughing at Alvin Bragg’s Indictment of Trump)
According to New York State Judge Juan Merchan, Trump will not be allowed to publicize evidence shown to his defense team as part of discovery. The prohibitions go deeper from there.
The New York state judge presiding over the criminal hush money case against Donald Trump issued an order Monday restricting the former president from posting about some evidence in the case on social media.
Judge Juan Merchan largely sided with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by limiting what Trump can publicly disclose about new evidence from the prosecution before the case goes to trial.
The order says that “any materials and information provided by the People to the Defense in accordance with their discovery obligations … shall be used solely for the purposes of preparing a defense in this matter.”
Merchan’s order said anyone with access to the evidence being turned over to Trump’s team by state prosecutors “shall not copy, disseminate or disclose” the material to third parties, including social media platforms, “without prior approval from the court.”
Trump will also be banned from looking at “limited dissemination information” without his lawyers present, and he will not be allowed to take pictures or make copies of any of the documents. Further, he is being barred from reviewing “forensic images of witness cellphones.” Only sanitized images approved by the judge will be allowed to be seen by the former president.
Prosecutors cited Trump’s prior behavior in other legal cases to support their requests.
“Donald J. Trump has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him, putting those individuals and their families at considerable safety risk,” the DA’s office argued in a court filing last month.
Some conservative outlets are calling this a “gag order.” It doesn’t qualify as that. Trump is still free to talk about the case publicly in whatever manner he chooses (for now, at least). This protective order relates specifically to the taking and distribution of evidence produced in discovery.
Still, it’s similar in purpose in that it seeks to stop Trump from publicly framing the debate around specific evidence being brought against him. Whether that’s a big loss is debatable. Trump railing against a witness would probably do more harm than good anyway, especially in regard to how much harder the judge in the case comes down on him. This is Manhattan we are talking about. There’s no winning public sympathy in that jurisdiction by taking things to social media. Only a hard-nosed, disciplined legal strategy will possibly prevail.
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