AFPi
AFP https://istoe.com.br/autor/afp/
02/04/2024 – 13:16
Donald Trump called “corrupt”, this Tuesday (2), the judge who increased the gag order to avoid attacks against the judge’s family. Juan Merchan is responsible for presiding over the first of several criminal trials facing the former president.
“I have just been informed that another corrupt New York judge, Juan Merchan, has SILENCED me so that I cannot speak out about the corruption and conflicts taking place in his court,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“They can talk about me, but I can’t talk about them? That seems fair, doesn’t it?”, added the former president: “ELECTORAL INTERFERENCE of the worst kind!”
On Monday (1st), the judge extended the ban already imposed on Trump from publicly attacking witnesses, jurors, or court staff, claiming that members of his family or Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg should also be protected. of attacks.
The order comes after Trump attacked the judge and his daughter in a series of publications on Truth Social.
Merchan said in the order, Monday, that Trump’s “pattern of attacking family members of jurists and lawyers assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose (…) it only frightens those involved in the process,” he said.
Trump faces accusations of falsifying business records to cover up payments his lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to former porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to ensure a sexual encounter between the two did not come to light.
The case begins on April 15 and marks the beginning of the first criminal trial in history against a former president.
Asked by journalists if he would agree to testify, Trump said he “will have no problem testifying.”
The former president currently has four criminal complaints and faces 88 charges for a wide variety of alleged crimes.
