Washington, April 2.- The Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Alvin Bragg, asked to extend the gag order on former US President Donald Trump, following recent attacks on the daughter of the judge in his case in New York.
The defendant's dangerous, violent and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings and is intended to intimidate both witnesses and participants in the trial, including this Court, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote in court papers.
Judge Juan Merchán imposed a gag order against Trump last week that limits his offenses to court staff, prosecutors, jurors and witnesses as his first criminal trial approaches on April 15 related to how he decided to silence a porn actress in 2016 so that she would not reveal an alleged affair.
But Trump chose Merchán's daughter as a target since the magistrate refused to delay the trial, so the parties are arguing about the limits of the restrictions on the former president.
Trump's legal team insisted that the change to the gag order would only further violate the First Amendment rights of their client (almost certainly the Republican Party's nominee for the Nov. 5 election).
Prosecutors subpoenaed more than a half-dozen posts on the Truth Social network over the past week, including those attacking the judge's daughter for her employment at a progressive digital agency that has worked with the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign.
Colangelo emphasized that family members of participants in this process must be strictly off limits and the defendant's insistence otherwise reveals a dangerous sense of entitlement to instigate fear and even physical harm to the loved ones of those he sees in the courtroom.
This Court should immediately make clear that the defendant is prohibited from making or directing others to make public statements about the Court's family members, the District Attorney, and all other persons named in the Order.
Prosecutors also asked the judge to formally warn Trump that "continued harassment or disruptive conduct" will cause him to lose access to the names of jurors in his trial.
Under the judge's current orders, Trump will have access to their names and only his lawyers will have access to their addresses.
The former president is charged in the Stormy Daniels case with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with the cover-up of buying her silence before the 2016 presidential election to prevent the adult film star from exposing the alleged extramarital relationship with Trump. (PL) (Photo: Taken from the Internet)
