Former President Donald Trump has been handed a rare win in his New York civil fraud trail, with an appeals court judge temporarily lifting a gag order that applied to the ex-president and his legal team.
Justice David Friedman, a Democrat who was assigned to the appellate court by Republican former New York Governor George Pataki in 1999, issued a stay of New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron‘s order on Thursday. The stay will be in effect at least until a hearing set for November 27.
Engoron’s order, which was issued after the ex-president repeatedly spoke out against the court’s principal law clerk, prohibited Trump from publicly discussing communications between Engoron and his staff. A second gag order was later issued to expand the restrictions to Trump’s legal team.
Trump’s attorneys filed an emergency lawsuit with the appellate court hours before the stay, asking for the orders to be overturned. The suit argues that Engoron “violated multiple sections of the Judiciary Law” and questions “his ability to function as an impartial finder of fact in a bench trial.”
Friedman’s brief order noted “the constitutional and statutory rights at issue.” The decision came after Friedman convened an emergency hearing in a conference room of a state appellate courthouse on Thursday afternoon, according to the Associated Press.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba told AP that she would not encourage Trump to limit his speech about Engoron’s staff because New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed the $250 million lawsuit against the former president, continued to “disparage” her client.
“I don’t see a reason for restrictions because Ms. James is continuing to disparage my client,” Habba said. “Both sides need to be able to speak and the fact that I, frankly, couldn’t and my client couldn’t speak, for the past however many days, is so unconstitutional.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the offices of Trump and James via email on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers filed a motion urging Engoron to declare a mistrial to “salvage what is left of the rule of law.” As the motion included multiple references to Engoron and his clerk, some questioned whether the attempt at a mistrial itself violated the gag orders.
Engoron already found Trump liable for committing fraud in a summary judgment, with the current portion of the trial seeking to determine the extent of the penalties that could be imposed on the ex-president and his co-defendants, including two of his adult children.
Thursday’s decision came about two weeks after another gag order, pertaining to Trump’s Washington, D.C., election subversion criminal case, was temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court ahead of a hearing set to take place on Monday.
In addition to the Engoron trial and other civil cases, Trump is facing a total of 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming to be the victim of political “persecution” and “election interference.”
Brandon Bell
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
