The judge overseeing former US President Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial urged a state appellate court to uphold a gag order against Trump. Judge Arthur Engoron said that he has faced a “deluge” of “threatening, harassing, disparaging and antisemitic messages” since the trial began that present an ongoing threat to the safety of both him and his court staff. On November 16, the appellate court temporarily lifted the gag order while the court considers Trump’s petition to fully lift the order.
Engoron’s appellate court filing comes in response to a November 16 petition from Trump’s legal team, asking to stay Engoron’s gag order against Trump over free speech concerns. The same day, the court agreed to temporarily lift the order to consider “the constitutional and statutory rights at issue” in Trump’s petition.
Attached to Engoron’s filing was a statement from a security official with the New York court system, which said that the gag order against Trump reduced the number of threatening messages Engoron and his staff received. However, on the two occasions that Trump violated the gag order, Engoron and his staff experienced an increased number of threatening messages.
The security official also included a sample of the hundreds of daily messages received by Engoron and his staff, including antisemitic slurs and profane language. There are several messages including language like, “We are going to get you,” and “You should be killed.” Engoron’s law clerk, Allison Greenfield, has also been the target of a large amount of the threatening messages. The security official warned that a post from Trump that mentioned, but did not directly attack, Greenfield “resulted in hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages that have been transcribed into over 275 single spaced pages.”
Underscoring the severity of these messages, the security official stated, “The threats against Justice Engoron and [his staff] are considered to be serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative.” As a result, Engoron and his staff face a daily, ongoing security risk.
Engoron urged the court to deny Trump’s petition to permanently lift the gag order. Though Trump claimed that the gag order impinges upon his free speech rights under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, Engoron argued that the court has the ability to place limitations on speech when “an important countervailing interest is being served.” In this case, the countervailing interest is Engoron and his staff’s safety.
The civil fraud trial against Trump started about a month ago in a New York courtroom. Trump, his children and his business face allegations that they engaged in financial fraud to obtain more favorable loan rates and tax breaks. The trial is a bench trial, meaning that there is no jury. Instead, the trial’s outcome will be determined by Engoron. The trial is expected to last through the end of December.
Since the trial began, Trump has repeatedly lashed out and made comments about Engoron, his staff and the prosecution, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. While a bulk of the comments have been made on Trump’s social media accounts, Trump has also made comments outside of the courtroom and on the stand.
