'Are you kidding me?' Former judge says Trump has no chance of lifting gag order now
May 30, 2024
A lawyer who worked with former President Donald Trump suggested he should use his jury deliberation free time in his criminal hush money trial to challenge Judge Juan Merchan's gag order — but that would get immediately smacked down, retired federal Judge John E. Jones III told CNN's Boris Sanchez on Thursday.
The gag order in the case, where Trump is charged with falsification of business records, prohibits him from disparaging witnesses, court officers, and their families — and he has already been fined for contempt of court and threatened with jail after being found to violate it.
"So moments ago, Judge, we spoke to a former Trump attorney, Tim Parlatore, and he relayed the idea that it's time for the defense to re-examine the gag order and to push for the gag order to be lifted, something that Donald Trump has wanted," said Sanchez. "Now, for just about as long as it's been imposed on him, the argument is essentially that the jury has been selected, so there's no really tainting the jury pool and the witnesses have already testified, so there's no witness intimidation."
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"Would you agree — would you think that Judge Merchan might be open to re-examining the gag order?" Sanchez pressed him.
"Boris, I'm going to call it like the former judge that I am," said Jones. "Tim is a great attorney I respect very much ... if they asked Judge Merchan to reconvene court while the jury was deliberating, saying, by the way, we want you to lift the gag order, he would look at them and say, are you kidding me? While the jury is deliberating, there's no way I'm going to touch that."
Ultimately, he said, "at this point they'd get their heads handed to them by Merchan if they attempted to do that ... I think that he'll let that alone."
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