A preview of what’s to come: Donald Trump arrives for a pre-trial hearing this week for his hush money criminal trial in New York City. (Photo by Mary Altaffer-Pool via Getty Images) A year ago in April, Juan Merchan entered the public consciousness as the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 34 felony charges for falsifying business records and illegally scheming to influence the 2016 presidential election with hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. It didn’t take long for the death threats and harassment to come pouring in—directed to Columbian-born Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—incited by the criminal defendant. “I have a Trump hating judge, with a Trump hating wife and family,” Trump posted, just one of his attacks on Judge Merchan that required increased security in and around the courthouse.
At Trump’s arraignment last year, Merchan told him to “refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence and civil unrest." Well, we all know about the malignant one’s refusal to temper his abusive insults and violent incitements concerning this and every other court proceeding he’s faced—necessitating judges, prosecutors and other court employees to seek protection. These acts of abuse, from a man who occupied the highest office in our land, will never not be stunning and disgusting.
This week, though, Judge Merchan was not taking any more of Trump’s threats. Rather than wait for the trial to begin April 15, Merchan imposed a gag order Tuesday on Trump, focused on the danger he would likely cause court employees, witnesses and jury members. (He didn’t restrict the order to Trump’s comments about him, his family or D.A. Bragg.)
The details of Merchan’s order may uplift those of us who have felt that it’s been high time—for a long time—to push back on this hateful man’s attacks on people and democratic institutions.
Merchan described Trump’s “extrajudicial statements” as “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” with targets including “local and federal officials, court and court staff, prosecutors and staff assigned to the cases, and private individuals including grand jurors performing their civic duty.” The consequences? Frightening the targeted individuals and requiring increased security to investigate and protect them and their families. As Merchan writes:
Although this Court did not issue an order restricting defendant's speech at the inception of this case, choosing instead to issue an admonition, given the nature and impact of the statements made against this Court and a family member thereof, the District Attorney and an Assistant District Attorney, the witnesses in this case, as well as the nature and impact of the extrajudicial statements made by Defendant in the D.C. Circuit case (which resulted in the D.C. Circuit issuing an order restricting his speech), and given that the eve of trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount.
And Judge Merchan concluded that he was not going to hold back until Trump caused harm: “This court need not wait for the realization of further proscribed speech targeted at the participants of this trial.”
His gag order demands that the criminal defendant refrain from “making or directing others to make public statements” concerning: “known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses”; counsel other than D.A. Bragg, court staff and the D.A.’s staff, as well as their family members; and “any prospective juror or any juror in this criminal proceeding.”
Responding to arguments about the defendant’s right to free speech, Merchan noted that the court has an obligation to prevent speech that would “disturb the integrity of a trial” and “the fair administration of justice.” Quoting the 1978 Landmark Communications v. Virginia decision, Merchan writes, “Properly applied, the test requires a court to make its own inquiry into the imminence and magnitude of the danger said to flow from the particular utterance and then to balance the character of the evil, as well as the likelihood, against the need for free and unfettered expression.”
Of course, it took Trump less than 24 hours to begin his attacks again targeting Merchan and his daughter, Loren Merchan, a Democratic political consultant. Insisting that the judge suffers from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump called the order “another illegal, un-American, unConstitutional ‘order’ as he continues to try and take away my Rights” and 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, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!”
To make his pitiful case of persecution, he claimed that Loren Merchan was posting pictures of him behind bars on the site formerly known as Twitter. Yet, in fact, she deleted her account over a year ago. This account, a court spokesman noted Wednesday, “is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screen name since she deleted the account.”
In other words, someone else on Elon Musk’s site is manipulating her old account. But never expect Trump to let facts get in his way: “…the Lunatics,” he wrote, are “trying to destroy my life and prevent me from winning the 2024 Presidential Election.”
So sad. So unfair. A man accused of illegally paying off a porn star’s silence in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election is being held accountable by the criminal justice system. While this man has always believed the rule of law does not apply to him, the vise is tightening.
On the same day as the gag order, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde fired Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor. This was in response to the firestorm inside and outside NBC after hiring the former Republican National Committee chair, election denier, coup abetter and fake elector scheme participant.
The pushback from on-air anchors—including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Nicole Wallace and Joy Reid, as well as NBC’s Chuck Todd—let management know that they refuse to work with a proven liar who participated in the coup attempt and was more than willing to condemn journalists, assist the subversion of the people’s will and hasten democracy’s demise. This high-profile and articulate protest drew a clear line in the sand for both journalists and the company’s leadership.
In a memo, Conde said that he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”
Yes, it did. To pay a lying participant in the insurrection to give her “insider’s perspective” alongside journalists whose credibility depends on honesty sanitizes the deed and poisons the journalistic well.
The pushback mattered. This battle will go on.
Lastly, election denying Trump fanatic Kari Lake, the failed candidate for Arizona governor who has continued to lie about her election’s outcome in 2022, has insisted that she will continue to fight and “never surrender.” But, also on Tuesday, she formally petitioned a court to hold a default judgement hearing to determine if and how much she owes Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer for defamation. She falsely claimed that he ruined her campaign by printing invalid ballots, calling him an “incompetent, corrupt fool” and a “reprehensible human being.”
But Richer, a 38-year-old Republican, was not going to take the vicious lies from her; he filed a defamation suit last June. He later noted that he and his family faced “endless and vile threats, including calls for our execution, and I’ve lost important personal relationships and seen my reputation severely damaged” by Lake.
While Lake continued to say without evidence that she’s always told the truth, she is not defending herself in this defamation suit. Rather, she wanly calls the suit “a political witch hunt”—heard that before?—and her further participation “would only serve to legitimize this perversion of our legal system.” Basic translation: She lacks proof and fears the discovery process that would make plain her empty lies. Richer’s pushback revealed the truth of the “no surrender” Trump acolyte, who’s now running for Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat.
Some days it may seem that the tyrannical minority really has the upper hand. But this week, on Tuesday, we got clear indications that speaking out, pushing back and ordering restraint can make a difference. If these three developments signal the weakening grip of the MAGA movement, savor another reason for hope, also on Tuesday: Democrat Marilyn Lands, who ran on access to abortion and in vitro fertilization, confounded expectations and secured an overwhelming victory in deep-red Alabama’s special election.
Her 26-point win (63-37 percent) demonstrated voters’ determination. As Lands told the Associated Press, “Voters want something different, and I think they are tired of women’s freedoms and reproductive health care not being addressed.”
Yes. It’s high time for pushing back.
