Former President Donald Trump blasted the judge overseeing the hush money case against him in New York and criticized the judge’s daughter on Wednesday — one day after Trump was hit with a gag order in the case.
Trump accused Judge Juan Merchan of “suffering from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” and said Merchan’s daughter “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump’” in a string of posts on his social media platform Truth Social.
Merchan imposed a gag order on Trump on Tuesday that restricted the presumptive GOP presidential nominee from speaking publicly about witnesses in the case, staff of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, court staff, family members of staff, and prospective jurors.
The gag order specifically left open the ability for Trump to speak about Bragg, and it did not appear to limit Trump from speaking about Merchan or his daughter specifically. Merchan has discretion over how to enforce the order, and he has not at this stage attempted to limit Trump from speaking about him or his daughter despite Trump targeting them as early as last summer.
However, Merchan said in the order that Trump’s comments about a variety of officials involved in the case were “threatening, inflammatory, [and] denigrating” and that the comments have “undoubtedly” caused fear in those Trump has attacked, as well as required the court to invest in heightened security because of an increase in threats to Trump’s targets.
With a trial scheduled to begin on April 15, Merchan said the “imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount.”
Trump asked Merchan last year to recuse himself from the case in part because his daughter, Loren Merchan, was the president of a marketing firm that provided services to Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden’s running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Merchan denied Trump’s request at the time, saying an ethics committee found his daughter’s work presented no conflict of interest that would warrant Merchan’s recusal.
Trump claimed on Wednesday that Loren Merchan “represents Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and other Radical Liberals” and had “just posted a picture of me behind bars, her obvious goal.”
Loren Merchan’s X account, which her marketing company has promoted, indeed displayed a profile picture of Trump in a prison cell earlier in the day on Wednesday, but the account’s profile photo has since changed.
In his Truth Social posts, Trump also denounced the gag order as a violation of his free speech rights and a form of election interference.
“This Judge, by issuing a vicious ‘Gag Order,’ is wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement, including the fact that Crooked Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their Hacks and Thugs are tracking and following me all across the Country, obsessively trying to persecute me,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche declined to comment on his client’s latest remarks.
Merchan’s gag order was tailored to mirror a similar order that the appellate court in Washington, D.C., affirmed as constitutional as part of Trump’s federal election interference case.
Trump has repeatedly argued that gag order restrictions hinder his ability to speak to voters and therefore not only unconstitutionally stifle his speech but also impede the public’s right to a fair election.
Merchan noted in the order that he had to weigh both Trump’s First Amendment rights with the right to a fair trial in which witnesses, staff, and jurors do not feel threatened, and the judge said that balancing the two required the “highest scrutiny.”
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The order came one day after Trump had named an expected witness in the case, Michael Cohen, on Truth Social and then used much of a press conference to criticize Matthew Colangelo, one of Bragg’s prosecutors who has a history of working on legal cases against Trump.
Comments of that nature would now likely be deemed a violation of the order, and Merchan could impose penalties, such as fines, on Trump for them in the future.