Former President Donald Trump is unable to react to the latest gag order with anything other than childish rage, wrote his niece Mary Trump in a new analysis emailed out to her mailing list.
The gag order, issued by Judge Juan Merchan, affects the hush money trial, where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is charging the former president with bookkeeping fraud concerning a hush payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to hide damaging information about an affair from voters in the 2016 election.
It's the latest of several gag orders that have impacted Trump in his various legal cases, some of which he was actually fined for violating.
Trump had taken to his Truth Social platform just hours before the announcement, noted Mary Trump. "True to form, Donald responded with the restraint of a toddler by attacking not only Judge Merchan (declaring 'he hates me!' and suggesting he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome) but also the judge’s daughter," she wrote.
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"'His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, (Dem)Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden,' Donald wrote."
Trump is right to be worried, she added, because "Judge Merchan goes a step further" than the gag orders in other cases, "and covers additional groups of people involved in the court process, including witnesses and even potential witnesses."
This matters because Trump routinely uses attacks on court officers and witnesses to pump up his supporters and keep the engagement and donations flowing — something that, if he tries to do now, could land him in a world of legal hurt.
"By taking away Donald’s ability to go on the attack against court staff and witnesses, Merchan is inadvertently stripping Donald of one of his go-to tools to keep his base angry and try to make inroads with disillusioned independents," Mary Trump concluded. "Will this latest development lead to the self-inflicted blow that finally lands Donald behind bars? Maybe. Will it further hurt his election chances? They had certainly better."