Legal scholar “confident” judge who lifted Trump gag order “greatly regrets” decision after threats

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial released hundreds of transcripts detailing the bigoted and vulgar threats directed at him and his court staff in the aftermath of the former president’s targeted social media attacks.

Judge Arthur Engoron is seeking the reinstatement of two gag orders that would bar Trump and other parties from publicly attacking his staff. The judge had previously asserted that his office faced an influx of “hundreds of harassing” messages following Trump’s social media attacks on his chief law clerk, which initially led to the imposition of the gag orders.

Earlier this month Engoron issued an additional gag order that also included his attorneys after Trump’s lawyers repeatedly attacked law clerk Allison Greenfield in open court. While these orders specifically prohibited public comments about members of Engoron’s staff and not the judge himself, an appeals court temporarily halted the orders last week, acknowledging the validity of the “constitutional and statutory rights” concerns raised by Trump’s attorneys.

“The main legal challenge to gag orders in general is that they infringe on the First Amendment right to free speech,” Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University, told Salon. “Courts have to balance the danger to the personal safety of the persons being targeted by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric as well as the damage to the integrity of judicial proceedings with the right to speak.”

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani added that while Engoron faces “significant First Amendment challenges” to his gag orders, he’ll have a better chance of success on appeal if they are “narrowly tailored.” This is the same issue Judge Tanya Chutkan is dealing with in the DC Court of Appeals.

Charles Hollon, a court official in the Public Safety Department, wrote in the filing that threats and harassment “increased exponentially” after the former president suggested the Greenfield was in a romantic relationship with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. 

Her cell phone number and email addresses were compromised with Greenfield being subjected to “harassing, disparaging comments and antisemitic tropes” on a daily basis, he wrote, according to Courthouse News Service.

The filing also contained transcripts of voicemails left on Engoron’s chambers phone, with certain portions redacted due to vulgar language. 

“Resign now, you dirty, treasonous piece of trash snake,” one voicemail said. “We are going to get you and anyone of you dirty, backstabbing, lying, cheating American. You are nothing but a bunch of communists. We are coming to remove you permanently.” 

Another voicemail threatened “I will come for you,” and “send every hacker in the world” to “expose you.” 

Trump’s post led to “hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages, which have been transcribed into over 275 single-spaced pages,” Hollon wrote. He added that the threats are serious, “not hypothetical or speculative,” according to CNS.

“Engoron could ask for law enforcement protection for himself and his clerk, but I’m sure he would prefer the threats to stop in the first instance,” Rahmani said. “And they will probably get worse if and when Engoron holds Trump liable, fines him hundreds of millions of dollars, and cancels his business licenses.”

These messages have created an “ongoing security risk for the judge, his staff and his family,” Hollon wrote in the filing, noting that the implementation of the limited gag orders resulted in a decrease in the number of threats, harassment, and disparaging messages that the judge and his staff received. But, when Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased. 

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“Trump could argue that he has no control over how the public views his incendiary statements and that he is protected by what courts call the ‘Heckler’s Veto,’ meaning that you can’t stop a person from speaking by a concern over how the audience might respond or that the speech might promote danger, unless that danger, in the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, is ‘clear and present,’ Gershman said.

He added that he has “confidence” that given the current circumstances, the gag order will be reinstated and potentially strengthened.

“The record of phone calls, voicemails, and emails … include death threats, insinuations into the personal lives of the judge and his clerk, and include antisemitic remarks,” Gershman said. “I’m confident that the appellate judge who vacated the gag order greatly regrets his decision.”

Trump’s attorneys dismissed the affidavit and 275 pages of transcripts as “irrelevant” to their federal case.

“To date, the prosecution has never submitted any evidence of alleged ‘threats’ or ‘harassment’ to any prosecutor, court staffer, or potential witness in this case,” Trump’s attorney wrote in the letter.

His lawyers are “using procedural tools” to keep new evidence out of the federal appeal, Rahmani said. Generally, evidence must be presented in the trial court to be preserved on appeal.