Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump requested the appeals court drop Judge Arthur Engoron’s gag order in his current fraud trial in Manhattan, along with the $5,000 and $10,000 fines that were slapped on him for violating the order, which bans him from being able to publicly speak about the folks on Engoron’s staff. On Nov. 16, Associate Justice David Friedman issued a temporary pause on the order.
However, according to the Daily Caller, an appeals court has now reinstated the order, which is bad news for Trump, as it prevents him from being able to tell his base supporters exactly what’s going on in the courtroom, a battle that concerns each and every American just as much as it does the former president. You see, the weaponization of the justice system is not just aimed at Trump, but at every single American who believes in the foundational principles of our republic. They hate him, because they hate you. Leftists can take out their hatred for you on him because of all the hard work and effort they have put into changing the country’s perception of him and his leadership.
However, that doesn’t change the fact Trump is a stand-in for every day American folk.
“Now, upon reading and filing the papers with respect to the motion, and due deliberation having been had thereon…It is ordered that the motion is denied; the interim relief granted by order of a Justice of this Court, dated November 16, 2023, is hereby vacated,” the appeals court’s order goes on to say.
JUST IN: Trump's gag order is back in place in NY. https://t.co/wx8e5p8xyn pic.twitter.com/ovCXeahOas
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 30, 2023
Here’s more from the Daily Caller’s report:
Engoron first imposed the order in October after Trump made a Truth Social post about his law clerk Allison Greenfield, calling her the “girlfriend” of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He expanded it early November to include his attorneys after finding they had made “on the record, repeated, inappropriate remarks” about Greenfield.
Trump’s attorneys argued Engoron had used the order as an “unfettered license to inflict public punishments on a defendant for the defendant’s out-of-court statements,” ABC News reported.
The former president was fined twice for violating the order: first for failing to remove the Truth Social post that sparked it from his campaign website for 17 days and second for remarks he made to reporters outside the courtroom referencing the person beside Engoron as “very partisan.” Trump’s separate motion for a mistrial due to “tangible and overwhelming” evidence of bias was also rejected this month by Engoron, who called it “utterly without merit.”
Back in September, the judge issued a ruling saying Trump had falsely inflated his net work and overvalued his assets, which led to the defrauding of banks and insurance companies. In other words, they say the former president made his properties seem more valuable than they were in order to get better rates on loans by local banks and insurance companies.
At the end of the day, this is a major free speech issue. Trump should be allowed to inform the general public about what is happening in the trial because of his level of importance on the political stage. Given that he is a former president and is currently running for office again, voters have a right to be kept in the loop.