The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump's hush money case might will overlook the former president's attacks on his daughter to avoid delaying the trial, an expert said Friday.
Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order on the former president Tuesday that limits what he can say publicly about certain individuals involved in his case — the spirit of which Trump tested by attacking the judge's daughter by name in a social media post.
The gag order bans comments on witnesses and jurors — but not the judge or his family members. And former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance says he's unlikely to broaden the order.
"[Merchan will likely] suck it up," Vance wrote in her Substack, "ignore Trump as much as possible and take one for the rule of law."
"The exception [to the gag order] is that he can talk about the DA himself," Vance said. "The Judge and his family also remain fair game. That’s because there is some sense that it’s unseemly for a judge or top prosecutor to protect themselves, and most of the time that makes sense, because it’s unnecessary.
"But this is Trump. He takes what’s not in the gag order as an invitation to go there."
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Trump accused Loren Merchan of working for President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and while she is a political consultant whose firm has worked on Democratic campaigns, including the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, he falsely linked her to a social media account that posted inflammatory content about him.
"When Trump paints a bullseye on a Judge’s back, his followers respond," Vance said. "He knows this. His followers have demonstrated their propensity towards threats and even violence over and over again, as when a Texas woman threatened to kill Judge Chutkan."
Merchan knows this, as well, and cited the former president's past "threatening, inflammatory, denigrating" statements when imposing the gag order.
"Such inflammatory extrajudicial statements undoubtedly risk impeding the orderly administration of this court," the judge wrote.
A federal appeals court twice upheld a gag order issued by federal judge Tanya Chutkan in the Washington, D.C., election subversion case, and New York judge Arthur Engoron fined him $15,000 for twice violating a gag order by publicly commenting on court staff during his civil fraud trial.