Arguing in favour of reinstating a gag order barring Donald Trump from mentioning the law clerk involved in his $250 million civil fraud trial, court officials on Wednesday detailed what they described as a “barrage” of threats targeting the clerk after the former president complained about her on social media.
In a filing supporting an end to a temporary pause in the gag order, an official with the New York State Court System’s Department of Public Safety said the judge presiding over the case, Arthur Engoron, had already been the subject of harassment and threats on social media that were deemed “credible” before the trial began in early October.
These threats prompted court officials to “work with the FBI and Homeland Security to determine the appropriate security measures that would be implemented to protect the judge, his chambers staff, and those closely associated with him, including his family,” Charles Hollon, who works in the Judicial Threat Assessment Unit of the Department of Public Safety, said in the filing.
Then, on the second day of the trial, Trump posted a message on Truth Social identifying Engoron’s chief law clerk and falsely claiming she was in a relationship with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. While Trump himself did not threaten her, Hollon said, “the comments made in his post resulted in hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages that were transcribed into over 275 single-spaced pages.”
A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
Hollon went on to say that the employee’s “personal information, including her personal mobile phone number and personal email addresses, have also been compromised, resulting in daily doxing. She has been subjected to harassing, disparaging comments and anti-Semitic tropes on a daily basis”. Specifically, the clerk receives 20 to 30 calls a day to her personal mobile phone and 30 to 50 messages a day on social media and personal email combined, Hollon said.
Since an appeals court temporarily lifted the gag order last week, about half of the harassing and disparaging messages sent to the clerk have been anti-Semitic, Hollon wrote. He said he found the threats against the judge and the clerk to be “serious and credible, not hypothetical or speculative”.
The pause in Engoron’s gag order will remain in place until at least Monday, when Trump’s final filing is due and the appeals court is free to decide the matter.
Both the Office of Court Administration, on behalf of Engoron, and the state attorney general’s office, which brought the fraud case against Trump, are asking the appeals court to reinstate the gag order.
Trump is also locked in a legal battle over a gag order in the federal election meddling case against him in Washington, D.C. A panel of federal appeals court judges heard arguments this week and indicated in their questioning that they might leave the gag order in place while narrowing its scope. The appeals court has not yet ruled on the case.