New York Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Challenge of Gag Orders

A New York appellate court on Thursday denied former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn gag orders barring him from attacking the principle law clerk of the state judge presiding over his civil fraud case.

In a four-page ruling, New York's Appellate Division, First Department noted that "the gravity of potential harm is small, given that the Gag Order is narrow, limited to prohibiting solely statements regarding the court’s staff."

Since Oct. 3, 2023, the second day of his civil fraud trial, Trump has been under a gag order forbidding him from making statements about the judge's staff after the former president attacked his principal law clerk on Truth Social. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron fined Trump twice for violating that order and expanded it to include Trump's lawyers.

Trump's lead attorney Christopher Kise bemoaned the decision.

"We filed the petition because the ordinary appellate process is essentially pointless in this context as it cannot possibly be completed in time to reverse the ongoing harm," Kise wrote in a statement. "Unfortunately, the decision denies President Trump the only path available to expedited relief and places his fundamental Constitutional rights in a procedural purgatory."

Known as an Article 78 petition, Trump's avenue of appeal essentially amounts to a lawsuit against the judge and his rulings. Trump's legal team appealed both of the gag orders, and a pair of rulings imposing fines for violations adding up to $15,000.

A four-judge appellate panel unanimously found that this avenue of appeal wasn't available to Trump and his attorneys under New York law, without addressing the former president's First Amendment claims.

"To the extent there may have been appealable issues with respect to any of the procedures the court implemented in imposing the financial sanctions, the proper method of review would be to move to vacate the Contempt Orders, and then to take an appeal from the denial of those motion," the panel found.

In a separate ruling, Trump was denied leave to appeal a decision reinstating the gag orders to New York's highest court.

Engoron justified the orders on protecting the safety of his staff, and court security officers revealed in a sworn statement that the judge and his clerk have been deluged with "hundreds" of harassing, threatening, and antisemitic messages since Trump post in early October. Trump remains free, under the terms of the gag order, to criticize the judge or New York Attorney General Letitia James, which he does frequently.

Trump's original Truth Social post about the female law clerk amplified a message from an account known as @Judicial Protest on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. The @JudicialProtest account is run by Wisconsin resident Brock Fredin, a 40-year-old who has a criminal history for harassing women. Fredin is under restraining orders barring him from contacting three women, and he was arrested in mid-October for 130 suspected violations of one of those orders, in a case that remains under investigation, The Messenger revealed.