Former President of the United States, Donald Trump has lashed out at the New York judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his April 15 hush-money criminal trial, making a claim which could be deemed fallacious about his daughter and urging him to step aside from the case.
In a social media post, the former president suggested that Judge Juan M. Merchan was kowtowing to his daughter’s interests as a Democratic political consultant. He also made a claim — later repudiated by court officials — that she had posted a social media photo showing Trump behind bars.
Africa Today News, New York reports that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, took to his Truth Social platform to complain that the gag order issued Tuesday was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional.” He said that Merchan, a veteran Manhattan jurist, was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals.
Trump claimed that Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats, had recently posted a photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him jailed.
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In a statement, a spokesperson for New York’s state court system said that claim was false and that the social media account Trump was referencing no longer belongs to Loren Merchan. It appears to have been taken over by someone else after she deleted it about a year ago, court spokesperson Al Baker said.
The account on X, formerly known as Twitter, “is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screenname since she deleted the account. Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned,” Baker said.
The gag order, which prosecutors had requested, bars Trump from either making or directing other people to make public statements on his behalf about jurors and potential witnesses in the hush-money trial, such as his lawyer turned nemesis Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels. It also prohibits any statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.
It does not bar comments about Merchan or his family, nor does it prohibit criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat whose office is prosecuting Trump.
Trump’s post insinuating that Loren Merchan had posted the photo came after conservative commentator Laura Loomer posted a story online Tuesday claiming to have unearthed her X account.