Judge Orders Witnesses Names to be Protected in Bragg Case

About a week ago, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg asked the court to issue a gag order against Donald Trump.

Bragg referred to previous orders that had been made against Trump due to his penchant to attack witnesses and court members.

As expected, the court ruled in favor of Bragg on the matter.

Another Court Loss

Bragg is facing 34 counts of filing false business records.

Excuse the pun, but these charges against the former president are “trumped” up.

In similar cases, the ledger entries would be combined and one count would be filed.

Bragg wanted to make a name for himself, so he stacked the ledger entries so that each entry was another charge, which many legal experts have even stated was over the top.

With jury selection fast approaching and Donald Trump having already aired his grievances over this case on social media, Bragg wanted to protect the jurors' identities so that Trump would not call them out on social media.

As I stated in reports last week, we fully expected Judge Merchan to rule in Bragg’s favor due to Trump’s conduct in other cases, and that is exactly what he did.

Merchan ruled, “Having considered the arguments advanced by the People in their motion and by Defendant in his response, this Court concurs that a protective order is necessary.

“The Court further finds good cause, on the record before it, ‘that there is a likelihood of bribery, jury tampering, or of physical injury or harassment of juror(s).’”

Trump’s attorneys responded to the ruling, “It would be unconstitutional and unlawful to impose a prior restraint on President Trump’s First Amendment speech, which, notably, the People have requested around the time of Super Tuesday and as President Biden prepares to use the State of the Union address for his own political advocacy — to assail President Trump based on politically motivated indictments, including the one in this case.”

This is a big problem for Trump because now his options are to stay off social media, which ruins his strategy of using this to claim election interference, or post and face violating the gag order, which will cost him more money.

This is arguably the weakest case against Trump, but I still doubt he will win the case on the first go around.

As is the case with the New York fraud case, I believe Trump’s best chance of winning will be on appeal, so he would be best served to mind the gag order and go full throttle when the opportunity to appeal the verdict is presented.

If Trump violates this gag order, you better believe the prosecutors in the other cases will be filing orders against Trump to completely silence him during these trials, which just happen to coincide with election season.