Former President Donald Trump‘s legal team was placed under a new partial gag order Friday by Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York.
Engoron blocked Trump’s defense team from making further comments about the judge’s communications with his staff, warning of sanctions for further violations.
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“The First Amendment right of defendants and their attorneys to comment on my staff is far and away outweighed by the need to protect them from threats and physical harm,” Engoron wrote.
The order came after defense lawyers made repeated objections about the working relationship between him and his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, including suggestions that she was biased.
While Trump’s attorneys have zeroed in on note passing and whispers between Greenfield and Engoron, donations Greenfield made to Democrats in 2022 and 2023, which appear to have exceeded a $500 ethics code limit, became the topic of a lengthy argument Friday morning, according to Politico.
The attorneys said the donations further underscored Greenfield’s bias, but they also pointed to a report in Breitbart News about a complaint a Wisconsin man allegedly filed to Engoron about the donations and warned they would consider seeking a mistrial because of Engoron’s alleged awareness of them.
Engoron shot back that it was “absolutely untrue” that he had ever seen the complaint and said he would let “everybody in the room decide what they think of Breitbart.”
Trump himself has also accused Greenfield of bias, which led to the initial limited gag order barring parties from referencing Engoron’s staff.
In his expanded gag order, Engoron wrote, “My law clerks are public servants who are performing their jobs in the manner in which I request.”
Engoron also said his office has received “hundreds of harassing threats and phone calls” and indicated Trump’s remarks about his staff had caused a risk to staff safety that “far and away outweighed” Trump’s First Amendment rights to continue making such remarks.
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Trump has violated Engoron’s initial order twice, leading to a cumulative $15,000 in fines.
Read the updated gag order below:
