Court Filing Urges Gag of Trump Over Social Media Posts

Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Nov. 6, 2023. Curtis Means/Pool/Getty Images

Lawyers for the New York state court system argued Wednesday that former President Donald Trump’s criticism of a judge’s clerk on social media allegedly led to “hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages,” according to court documents.

In a filing with the the New York appeals court, state attorneys argued that a gag order that was handed down weeks ago by a judge in the former president’s civil fraud case should be upheld, coming after President Trump criticized Judge Arthur Engoron’s chief law clerk, Allison Greenfield. The appellate court has since lifted the gag order as it hears arguments in the case.

“Ms. Greenfield’s personal information, including her personal cell phone number and personal email addresses also have been compromised resulting in daily doxing,” Charles Hollon, the court officer with the New York Department of Public Safety, wrote in an affidavit that was filed Wednesday. “She has been subjected to, on a daily basis, harassing, disparaging comments, and antisemitic tropes.”

President Trump has not publicly responded to the allegation.

The judge’s gag order specifically locked President Trump and his lawyers from making comments about his staff, and he’s fined the former president several thousand dollars so far. Since the court lifted the order, the former president has since criticized Ms. Greenfield on Truth Social, saying that she is a Democratic Party loyalist with close ties to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Mr. Hollon wrote that threats against Judge Engoron and Ms. Greenfield can be deemed “serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative.” He did not provide specific evidence but said the threats have been “transcribed into over 275 single spaced pages.”

“I have been informed by Ms. Greenfield that she has been receiving approximately 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and approximately 30-50 messages per day on combined sites of social media, Linkedln and two (2) personal email addresses,” the court papers say. “Ms. Greenfield also informed me that since the interim stay was issued lifting the gag orders on November 16, 2023, approximately half of the harassing and disparaging messages have been antisemitic.”

It added that after Judge Engoron implemented the gag order, the number of “threats, harassment, and disparaging messages” have dropped.

A lawyer with Attorney General Letitia James’ office, which brought the civil case against the former president, also filed court papers on Wednesday and claimed his comments about the clerk are “highly inappropriate.”

“Each of these orders properly imposed exceedingly limited restraints on speech to protect the safety of the court’s staff and preserve the orderly administration of the trial,” wrote Dennis Fan, the senior assistant solicitor general in Ms. James’s office.

What Trump Has Said

President Trump, in his appeal, has argued that the judge’s gag order is unconstitutional and said the sanctions against him go against the court’s rules. His lawyers wrote in a recent filing that the order blocked his First Amendment right to free speech as he is campaigning for president.

“This constitutional protection is at its apogee where the speech in question is core political speech, made by the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, regarding perceived partisanship and bias at a trial where he is subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and the threatened prohibition of his lawful business activities in the state,” the lawyers wrote earlier this month.

Last week, a state appeals court lifted the gag order. Ruling at an emergency hearing on Nov. 16, Associate Justice David Friedman questioned Judge Engoron’s authority to police President Trump’s speech outside the courtroom, including his frequent complaints about the case on social media and in comments to TV cameras in the courthouse hallway.

“Considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue an interim stay is granted,” Judge Friedman wrote in an order.

The judge said that while it’s true that judges often issue gag orders, they’re mostly used in criminal cases where there’s a fear that comments about the case could influence the jury. The former president’s civil trial doesn’t have a jury.

Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said after the ruling that the appellate judge “made the right decision and allowed President Trump to take full advantage of his constitutional First Amendment rights to talk about bias in his own trial, what he’s seeing and witnessing in his own trial—which, frankly, everyone needs to see.”

Another Trump attorney, Alina Habba, last week indicated that she has no plans to advise the former president to keep quiet about the clerk.

“I don’t see a reason for restrictions because Ms. James is continuing to disparage my client,” said Ms. Habba, referring to the New York attorney general. “Both sides need to be able to speak.”

On Wednesday, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that Judge Engoron “fraudulently undervalued my properties,” referring to the judge’s earlier ruling in the civil case. He then claimed the judge “just did what” the attorney general “told him to do.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.