In a last-ditch effort to delay his hush money trial, Donald Trump reportedly filed a lawsuit Monday against the judge overseeing the case, challenging him on a gag order that prevented the former president from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and the judge’s family.
HuffPost reviewed the docket and confirmed Trump has taken legal action against New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, but all the documents remain under seal. Several media outlets, including CBS News and The New York Times, reported on Trump’s plans to sue for a stay of the gag order.
The effort comes just one week before jury selection is scheduled to start and is unlikely to succeed.
The appeals court also denied a separate attempt by Trump’s lawyers to move the trial out of Manhattan, where the jury pool would be largely Democrat.
Trump’s lawsuit comes a week after Merchan expanded an already existing gag order on Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president. After Trump lashed out at the judge’s daughter, Democratic political consultant Loren Merchan, and made several false claims about her, Juan Merchan ruled that his family was covered by the gag order as well.
“This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” the judge wrote in his order. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game,’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”
Trump said Saturday that it would be a “GREAT HONOR” to be jailed for violating the expanded gag order, writing on Truth Social that he would “gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela.”
The hush money case encompasses 34 felony charges of falsified business records against Trump, who’s accused of concealing a $130,000 payment from his then-attorney Michael Cohen to adult film performer Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election. Daniels claims the payment was made to silence her from speaking out about a sexual relationship she had with a married Trump in 2006.
Trump’s attempt to delay the hush money trial comes days after a judge denied his efforts to dismiss his classified documents case based on the Presidential Records Act.
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