2024-04-23 20:30:20
Donald Trump may complain about the horrors of New York justice, but he can rejoice in one of its particularities: his trial is not televised. Otherwise, the general public would have been able to witness the evisceration of his lawyer, Todd Blanche, by Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday April 23. At the start of the day, the magistrate looked into the defendant’s repeated violations of the “gag order” – obligation of silence – which was imposed on him. Donald Trump is on trial for 34 counts of falsification of accounting documents, intended to conceal the payment of $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 presidential election.
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This injunction from justice at the end of March was to result in the absence of comments and attacks against the main witnesses, in particular his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Stormy Daniels, but also the jurors, likely to be intimidated, or the magistrates involved and their relatives. However, the prosecutor’s office brought to the attention of Judge Merchan ten messages from Donald Trump on his Truth Social network, in defiance of this “gag order”.
Todd Blanche went through a bit of torture trying to justify these messages, playing with words, brandishing freedom of political expression. When the lawyer claimed that Donald Trump was making every effort to respect the “gag order,” Judge Merchan did not hold back, visibly irritated. “You are losing all credibility, I have to tell you now. You lose all credibility before this court. » A rare, brutal warning.
Trump defies court
A few minutes later, in capital letters, on Truth Social, Donald Trump accused the judge of having deprived him of his “constitutional right to free speech”. “Everyone has the right to talk and lie about me, but I don’t have the right to defend myself”complained the Republican candidate, continuing to defy the court.
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In an email calling on his activists to contribute financially to his campaign, Donald Trump went further, believing that justice was holding him back ” Held hostage “. Judge Merchan reserved his final decision for a later date. He could impose a financial penalty of $1,000 for each violation of the gag order, in accordance with the wishes of the prosecution, without going so far as to threaten the defendant with imprisonment.
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