President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump 2024.
Kevin Lamarque | Jay Paul | Reuters
As he takes on President Joe Biden in Thursday’s debate, former President Donald Trump will have to watch his tongue.
Trump is still bound by multiple court gag orders that limit his ability to testify about his extensive portfolio of legal problems.
Those restrictions could prove an obstacle for Trump as he faces trial in state and federal courts over his recent felony conviction in New York or dozens of other criminal charges against him.
According to NBC News, they could also provide an opportunity for Biden, who prepared for the first presidential debate in part by looking for ways to take down Trump and get under his skin.
The presumptive Republican nominee and the Democratic incumbent are both expected to abide by host network CNN’s rules, which allow moderators to “ensure a civilized discussion.”
The hush money gag order
Trump has grappled with the gag order imposed by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan during the former president’s historic hush money trial.
That court-ordered gag order prevented Trump from making public statements about witnesses or jurors in the case, or from speaking about attorneys and staff at the Manhattan district attorney’s office and courthouse, as well as their family members.
Trump violated Merchan’s gag order 10 times during the trial, prompting the judge to hold him in contempt and even threaten to throw him in prison if he didn’t stop.
Trump was convicted in late May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a plot to keep porn star Stormy Daniels from discussing an alleged one-night stand with Trump years earlier before the 2016 election.
The gag order was not automatically lifted at the end of the trial, and prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that Merchan should keep most of the restrictions in place until Trump is sentenced on July 11.
But on Tuesday, Merchan partially lifted the order and allowed Trump to speak about trial witnesses and jurors.
Trump still cannot address several categories of people connected to the case. But he is now free to speak out again about Daniels and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, two key witnesses who Trump has previously targeted with vitriolic language.
Whether he will do so on Thursday remains to be seen. Sources familiar with Trump’s preparation for the debate told NBC that he was advised to focus on core issues and policies. But “no one is telling Donald what to do,” one of those sources noted.
Read more about CNBC’s politics coverage
Ongoing restrictions
The recent focus on Trump’s hush-money gag order has obscured the fact that at least two others appear to remain in effect.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order against Trump in early October, on the second day of his civil business fraud trial in Manhattan. Engoron banned Trump and others involved in the case from commenting on court staff after the former president repeatedly disparaged the judge’s chief clerk.
In mid-February, Engoron ordered Trump to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and interest following the trial in which New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump and others of lying in business filings about his assets to increase his net worth and gain financial gain .
That ruling will be put on hold after Trump appealed the ruling and posted a reduced bail of $175 million. But Engoron’s silence order is technically still in effect, as it did not contain a self-cancellation mechanism and no request for cancellation was made after the trial ended.
In practice, however, this ban is unlikely to restrict Trump in his debate with Biden. And if his comments did indeed violate the restrictions, there is no guarantee that the court would require Engoron to be punished.
When CNBC called Engoron’s courtrooms to inquire about the silence order, one person responded, “No one has checked this. You’re the first person to ask.”
Meanwhile, in the Trump criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C., Judge Tanya Chutkan restricted the federal court from restricting public statements about likely witnesses, court personnel and related counsel, including special counsel Jack Smith.
In December, a federal appeals court limited the ban and allowed Trump to speak again about Smith, who is prosecuting the former president in Washington and, in his secret documents case, in Florida.
The case in Washington is on hold while the Supreme Court weighs Trump’s claim that he was immune from criminal charges because he was president at the time of the alleged crimes.
But Chutkan said in her December order staying the proceedings that she believes her court is still responsible for enforcing the amended gag order or other measures it imposes “to protect the integrity of these proceedings.”
A spokesperson for Chutkan’s office did not immediately confirm when asked by CNBC on Thursday whether the gag order would still be enforced.
The Supreme Court’s decision to address the immunity issue threatens to delay a possible trial beyond the November election. The court could announce its decision as early as Friday or Monday.
Meanwhile, in the Florida case, Smith has asked Judge Aileen Cannon to give Trump a gag order after he spread the false claim that FBI agents were given the authority to assassinate him when they raided Mar-a-Lago in 2022 . Cannon has not yet made a decision on this request.
Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO
Source link
2024-06-27 18:17:21
www.cnbc.com