Attorneys representing Donald Trump on Thursday directly sued New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron in an effort to overturn two fines totaling $15,000 imposed as a result of the ex-president violating a gag order, and separately petitioned to have the gag order voided in what appears to be their continued attempt to obtain a mistrial in Letitia James’ civil business fraud case.
Judge Engoron had imposed a very narrow gag order banning Trump and later, attorneys from both the prosecution and defense, from making public remarks about court staff.
An appellate court has temporarily paused Judge Engoron’s gag order, in a curt handwritten statement that reads: “Considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue an interim stay is granted.”
This is the second gag order imposed on Trump that has been paused, leading MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin to note: “Trump is now, at least temporarily, freed from gag orders now in both DC federal court and in NY state court.”
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“Trump,” Rubin explains, “has sued Judge Engoron directly, challenging his authority and jurisdiction over the contempt findings against Trump’s lawyers and the two gag orders in the New York AG’s civil fraud trial (one against Trump, the other against his lawyers).”
No decision will come until after Thanksgiving, but Law360 senior reporter Frank G. Runyeon, who was present at Thursday’s emergency hearing before the appellate judge issued a temporary stay on the gag order wrote: “This is not going well for the AG… Justice Friedman is highly skeptical of Justice Engoron’s gag orders.”
Trump’s lawyers in their written motion claimed the “Gag Orders unconstitutionally infringe on [their] freedom of speech
guaranteed by the First Amendment and Article I, Section 8 of the New York Constitution.”
“Justice Engoron may not, by judicial decree, transmogrify [magically transform] the court’s summary contempt power into an unfettered license to inflict public punishments on a defendant for the defendant’s out-of-court statements made for the benefit of the fourth estate [the press]. Nor does the court’s summary contempt power authorize Supreme Court and its staff to actively and independently investigate and prosecute violations of a gag order.”
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Importantly, in an apparent attempt to lay more ground for the mistrial which they filed for on Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys add: “Justice Engoron’s enforcement of the Gag Order has violated multiple sections of the Judiciary Law and casts serious doubt on his ability to function as an impartial finder of fact in a bench trial. His extraordinary expansion of that order both limits and chills advocacy on Petitioners’ behalf and precludes counsel on pain of contempt from making a record of misconduct and bias in a public courtroom.”
Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.