Newsmax cuts off Trump before he violates gag order: 'We don't want to get you in trouble'
Former President Donald Trump again tried to talk smack about the people involved in his criminal trial in Manhattan during an interview on the far-right Newsmax channel, when interviewer Greg Kelly cut him off for his own legal safety.
The former president faces charges of felony business fraud, for allegedly arranging hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to conceal a reputed affair between them from voters in the 2016 presidential election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has claimed this was effectively an election interference scheme; Trump denies any wrongdoing and still does not acknowledge the affair even happened at all.
"You have crime all over the place [in New York], violent crime," Trump raged. "And they've got 20 prosecutors and people from that office sitting there—"
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"We don't want to get you in trouble with that gag order," Kelly cut him off.
The gag order in the case, imposed by Judge Juan Merchan, is relatively permissive, and allows Trump to criticize the trial itself, the judge, and the district attorney, so his rant to Newsmax was not inherently a violation of the court's instructions. However, he is prohibited from attacking witnesses or jurors in the case, and he has also done this repeatedly, particularly going after his former attorney Michael Cohen who helped broker the alleged hush payment at the heart of the case and is expected to deliver some of the most important testimony. He has also complained that the jurors are biased against him.
Merchan has already held a hearing earlier in the week to determine whether to hold Trump in contempt of court for his repeated outbursts on social media, which could carry with it fines or even jail time. Since that hearing, Alvin Bragg has alleged multiple other instances of gag order violations.