An appeals court on Thursday reinstated speech restrictions intended to protect the judge’s team at Donald Trump’s financial fraud civil trial in New York, after the court reported a deluge of insults online.
• Read also: Assault on the Capitol: new images fuel conspiracies in the United States
• Read also: Appeal to Colorado Supreme Court on Trump’s electability
• Read also: Appeals court rules on free speech in Trump’s 2020 election trial
The former US president is accused along with two of his children, Donald Jr and Eric Trump, of having inflated the value of the Trump Organization’s real estate assets by billions of dollars in the 2010s to obtain more favorable loans from banks . The Trump camp denies any fraud.
From the 2nd day of this high-risk trial for Donald Trump’s real estate empire, on October 3, Judge Arthur Engoron had banned the parties from any public comments targeting his team, after a “degrading” publication for his chief clerk on the account of the former president of the United States on his Truth Social network.
The judge had since imposed two fines totaling $15,000 on the Republican billionaire for contravening this ban, estimating that Donald Trump’s attacks could encourage his supporters to attack his clerk or other members. of his team.
And since the start of the trial, the Republican favorite in the polls for the 2024 presidential election has attended several hearings, defended himself by testifying on November 6, and is expected again on the witness stand on December 11. He virulently attacked the judge, whom he described as a “thug”, or the Attorney General of the State of New York, Letitia James, “corrupt” and “racist” according to him.
But an appeals court suspended these restrictions on November 16, while it examined an appeal from the former president’s lawyers.
According to a decision rendered Thursday, she ultimately rejected this appeal and reinstated the speech limitations.
During consideration of the motion, a court officer argued in a written document that “the judge and his team are inundated daily with hundreds of threatening and intimidating phone calls, messages and emails,” some of them anti-Semitic.
He also said that the clerk’s personal information, including her cell phone number, had been exposed, and that she was receiving 20 to 30 calls a day on her personal line.
Donald Trump’s freedom of speech is also an issue debated at the federal trial which is due to open on March 4, 2024 in Washington, where he is accused of illicit maneuvers to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
