Former President Donald Trump lost a bid on Thursday to appeal his gag order in the New York criminal hush money case after saying it gives an unfair advantage to his 2024 presidential election opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Lawyers for Trump asked a New York appeals court on July 30 to expedite his effort to remove a gag order in his criminal case so he can fully respond to Harris’s claim that the 2024 presidential race is a choice between a prosecutor and a “convicted felon.”
The decision means Trump cannot comment publicly about individual prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s office until Justice Juan Merchan sentences him on Sept. 18.
Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee and a former attorney general of California, has made Trump’s 34-count felony conviction in the Empire State a key focus of her fledgling campaign, according to a filing from Trump attorney Todd Blanche on July 30, Bloomberg reported.
Blanche said Trump faces the “constant threat of punishment and fines due to alleged violations of the gag order and suffers irreparable First Amendment harms by being subjected to constant political attacks without being able to fully respond and defend himself.”
The request to lift the order came more than a month after Merchan lifted several parts of the gag order that was placed over Trump back in May. The revised order keeps in place restrictions on his statements about individual Manhattan prosecutors, court personnel, and family members of prosecutors and the judge.
Harris stepped into the spotlight as the presumptive Democratic candidate just over a week ago, when President Joe Biden abruptly exited from the race. Trump’s campaign has since been seeking to establish their key attack points against Harris, whose history working in law enforcement has become one of many distinctions she seeks to draw between herself and the former president.
Despite Merchan lifting most of the gag order against Trump, the restrictions still pose a significant obstacle when it comes to Trump making his case about an alleged “weaponized” justice system that he has blasted as he navigates four criminal cases.
For example, several of Trump’s allies, including Republican lawmakers in Washington, have pointed out that the lead prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s case, Matthew Colangelo, transferred from a top position in the Justice Department in 2022 to work for District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat.
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Although there is no evidence that the Biden administration deliberately shifted personnel, such as Colangelo, to bring the New York case against Trump, America First Legal founder Stephen Miller filed a Federal Election Commission complaint in June claiming there was a “coordinated” effort by the Biden administration and prosecutors within Bragg’s office to go after Trump in the New York case.
The decision over the gag order also comes as Trump is seeking to toss out the guilty conviction entirely ahead of the September sentencing, telling Merchan that the recent Supreme Court presidential immunity decision should invalidate the jury’s findings from late May.