Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order as he again presses judge to bow out of hush money case

Two months after his felony conviction, Donald Trump still isn’t allowed to say everything he wants about his historic hush money criminal case. After a New York appeals court upheld his gag order on Thursday, he won’t be for a while.

The state’s mid-level appellate court denied the Republican former president and current nominee’s latest bid to lift the restrictions, swatting away a last-minute argument that he’s being unfairly muzzled while Vice-President Kamala Harris, his likely Democratic opponent, pits herself as an ex-prosecutor taking on a “convicted felon.”

At the same time, Trump’s lawyers are again asking the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, to step aside from the case, saying his daughter’s past work as a Democratic political consultant for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign underscores questions about his ability to be impartial.

Merchan rejected the defence’s two prior recusal requests, last year and at the start of the trial in April, saying its concerns were “hypothetical” and based on “innuendos” and “unsupported speculation.”

In a letter Thursday to Merchan, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said Harris’ entry into the presidential race makes those issues “even more concrete” and said the judge has failed to address them “at a level of detail sufficient to repair the lack of public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”

In its gag order ruling Thursday, a five-judge panel found that Merchan was correct in keeping some restrictions in place until Trump is sentenced because the case is still pending and his conviction doesn’t constitute a change in circumstances that would warrant lifting it.

“The fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing,” they wrote.

The gag order bars Trump from speaking out about members of the prosecution team, court staffers or their families, including Merchan’s daughter, who has been the target of Trump’s wrath in the past.

In June, Merchan lifted a ban on Trump publicly commenting about witnesses and jurors in the case, and he has always been free to speak directly about the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat whose office prosecuted the case.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 18, but the case and the gag order could be terminated before that if Merchan grants a defence request to throw out his conviction in light of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. He said he plans to rule on Sept. 6.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche and a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on Thursday’s ruling.

The ruling came a day after Blanche tried to file papers asking the appeals court to immediately lift the gag order. With its decision imminent, the court rejected the filing, which had called the restrictions an “unconstitutional, election-interfering” muzzle on Trump’s free speech while he seeks to return to the White House.

In a copy of the prospective filing provided to The Associated Press, Blanche wrote that Harris’ recent entry into the presidential race had given the matter new urgency and that “it is unconscionable that Harris can speak freely about this case, but President Trump cannot.”

The defence also revived complaints that Merchan has a “glaring conflict of interest” because of his daughter’s ties to Harris and that one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, was biased because he was a Justice Department official under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Trump is unable to air those grievances himself because of the gag order.

Trump’s lawyers have made several efforts to have the gag order lifted.

Their latest fight landed in the state’s intermediate appeals court — the Appellate Division, one rung up from Merchan’s trial court level — after they struck out with the state’s top court. The Court of Appeals last month declined to hear Donald Trump’s gag order challenge, finding it did not raise “substantial” constitutional issues that would warrant immediate intervention.

Merchan imposed the gag order in March, restricting Trump from commenting about witnesses, jurors and others connected to the case, after prosecutors raised concerns about his habit of attacking people involved in his legal matters. The judge soon expanded it to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at the judge’s daughter and made false claims about her.

During the trial, the judge held Trump in contempt of court and fined him US$10,000 for violations, and he threatened to jail him if he did it again.

Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, was originally scheduled to be sentenced July 11. Merchan postponed it until September while he considers the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling, which gave broad protections to presidents and insulated them from prosecution for official acts.

The ruling also restricted prosecutors from citing any official acts as evidence in trying to prove a president’s unofficial actions violated the law.

Trump’s lawyers argue his trial was “tainted” by evidence that shouldn’t have been allowed, pressing their case in a new court filing Thursday. Prosecutors contend the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case because it involves unofficial acts for which the former president is not immune.

A Manhattan jury convicted Trump on May 30 of falsifying records to cover up a potential sex scandal, making him the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump’s conviction, on 34 felony counts, arose from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. She claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier, which he denies.

Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump. Prosecutors said Cohen disguised the reimbursements with Trump’s knowledge by submitting monthly invoices for retainer payments as his personal lawyer. Trump’s company logged the payments to Cohen as legal expenses.

Prosecutors said the Daniels payment was part of a broader scheme to buy the silence of people who might have gone public during the 2016 campaign with embarrassing stories alleging Trump had extramarital sex.

Trump has pledged to appeal his conviction, but he would not be able to do so until he is sentenced.