President Trump’s forceful social media postings denouncing “sleaze bags”  may be skating dangerously close to violating the gag order imposed on him, after the judge in his hush money case warned earlier this week that he could face jail if his violations persist.

In a dramatic post on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump again expressed his discontent about the gag order imposed on him by the judge, Juan Merchan, who presides over the ongoing hush-money trial.

“GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!’” Mr. Trump wrote on Wednesday morning shortly after 8 am, quoting the speech Patrick Henry gave at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, just weeks before the start of the War of Independence.

Mr. Trump complained that he has been stripped of his “Constitutional Right to Free Speech” by not being allowed to make comments about witnesses involved in the trial, or about the family members of the judge or the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who brought the charges. Mr. Trump deems the ruling unfair because the witnesses are allowed to slander him but he cannot respond. “Especially when all of the sleaze bags, lowlifes, and grifters that you oppose are allowed to say absolutely anything that they want,” Mr. Trump wrote.  

By referring to “sleaze bags”, Mr. Trump is directly referring to the two key witnesses in the case, Mr. Trump has been gagged from criticizing: Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer and current nemesis, and Ms. Daniels, a pornographic performer, writer and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. 

Mr. Trump previously used the insult “sleaze bags” in a post on April 10, when he thanked the disgraced and currently incarcerated attorney, Michael Avenatti, for speaking out on the issue. “Thank you to Michael Avenatti—for revealing the truth about two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!” Mr. Trump wrote on April 10, posting a screenshot of Mr. Avenatti’s tweet. 

“We can’t be hypocrites,” Mr. Avenatti’s tweet read, “when it comes to the first Amendment. It’s outrageous that Cohen and Daniels can do countless TV interviews, post on social, and make $$ on bogus documentaries – all by talking shit about Trump – but he’s gagged and threatened with jail if he responds.” 

Mr. Bragg has charged Mr. Trump with falsification of business records in a scheme to interfere with the 2016 election. At the heart of the case is the $130,000 hush-money payment Cohen made to Ms. Clifford in 2016 to buy her silence about her claim that she had a single sexual encounter with Mr. Trump at a golf tournament at Lake Tahoe. The prosecution accuses Mr. Trump of directing Cohen to wire money to her and then disguising the reimbursement to Cohen as a legal fee. Mr. Trump has pleaded innocent to all charges and denies ever having had sex with Ms. Clifford.            

On March 26, Judge Merchan issued a gag order against the former president, restricting him from making any public comments about witnesses, jurors, counsel, court staff and their families. On April 1, the judge extended the order to include his family members or those of the district attorney. Mr. Trump had continuously attacked the judge’s adult daughter, Loren Merchan, for working at an agency that does campaign work for high profile Democrats such as Vice President Harris and Rep. Adam Schiff, his enemies.  

The reason for the gag order, as explained by the judge, is that Mr. Trump’s public statements incite threats from his followers against the people Mr. Trump attacks, and the judge wants to ensure the safety of participants involved in the trial. 

During his recent civil fraud trial, held this past winter, Mr. Trump was also placed under a limited gag order after he began attacking the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, calling her, without proof, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “girlfriend”. When Mr. Trump appealed the gag order, the deputy counsel in the Office of Court Administration, Lisa Evans, filed an affidavit, a sworn statement, from a New York court officer assigned to the Judicial Threats Assessment Unit, Charles Hollon. 

Mr. Trump and his attorneys in the civil fraud case had accused Mr. Greenfield, who was seated on the bench close to the judge, of acts of bias including “rolling her eyes” and “co-judging”. According to Mr. Hollon’s affidavit, the number of threats against Ms. Greenfield increased immediately after Mr. Trump publicly attacked her, resulting in an abundance of hostile calls to her personal cell phone and threatening messages posted on social media platforms and sent to her personal email. About half of these threats were antisemitic. Transcriptions of the harassment filled 275 single-spaced pages, Ms. Evans stated in her court filing. An appeals court denied the appeal of the gag order. Mr. Trump’s attorneys went to the highest court, The New York State Court of Appeals, but in January were denied there as well.  

But the gag order in the hush-money trial is different because the witnesses Mr. Trump attacks are, unlike Ms. Greenfield, speaking out about him. Just yesterday Ms. Clifford testified in court that she spanked Mr. Trump with a rolled up business magazine during their sexual encounter at the golf tournament in 2006. She also published a memoir in 2018, “Full Disclosure,” which describes her tryst with Mr. Trump in graphic and embarrassing detail, and, more recently, she released the documentary “Stormy,” on NBCUniversal’s streaming platform, Peacock, on March 18. On Tuesday, she told the jury that she “hates” Mr. Trump and hopes he goes to jail if convicted.

One of Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys, Todd Blanche, told the judge that it was “unfair” that both Ms. Clifford and Cohen, who is constantly commenting about the case and Mr. Trump on live TV, in podcasts and even in TikTok videos, can denounce his client at will while Mr. Trump, bound by the gag order, cannot defend himself. 

Judge Merchan rejected Mr. Blanche’s arguments, ruling that the witnesses were not the defendants in the criminal case and could say what they pleased. Last Tuesday, he fined Mr. Trump $9,000 for nine violations. 

The first violation on the list was the post thanking Mr. Avenatti. The prosecution was especially outraged because  just one day earlier, the appeals court had granted an interim relief, temporarily denying Mr. Trump’s gag order appeal, and thus enforcing the restriction on referring directly to witnesses in the criminal proceeding. 

But Mr. Trump kept challenging the order. On Monday, the judge fined him another $1,000 for a tenth violation (when Mr. Trump referred to the jury as biased), and threatened to send the former president to jail if he continued.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent,” the judge told the court on Monday. “Going forward, this Court will have to consider a jail sanction, if recommended.” Then he addressed Mr. Trump directly and said, “Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is put you in jail. You are the former President of the United States and possibly the next president, as well… But at the end of the day, I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system and compel respect.”

The judge said that he was concerned how such a jail sentence would affect the personnel involved. “I also worry about the people who have to execute the sanction: the court officers, the correction officers, the Secret Service detail…” Judge Merchan told the court.   

A U.S. president has never been incarcerated, and presumably would require extraordinary levels of protection at New York’s notorious Rikers Island, where New York sends offenders with violations such as breaches of a court gag order. The Former President’s Act, a 1958 federal law, assures lifetime benefits for former presidents of the United States. The original act, which provided for lifetime protection from the Secret Service, was reduced to ten years in 1994, but reinstated in early 2013 by the Former Presidents Protection Act of 2012. In other words, Mr. Trump is entitled to protection by the Secret Service even inside a jail cell. 

As the Sun reported, New York’s Mayor Eric Adams said on Tuesday that the Department of Correction “is prepared for whatever comes on Rikers Island.” Mr. Adams assured reporters that the city “would be prepared to manage and deal with the situation.”

Mr. Trump, in quoting Patrick Henry, may be suggesting he’s fine with being incarcerated in defense of liberty. After Monday’s proceeding, he told court reporters, “this judge has given me a gag order and said you’ll go to jail if you violate. And frankly, you know what, our constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.” 

But on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump removed a Truth Social post which made a reference to Ms. Clifford, without using her name, being called as a witness, and his attorneys not having been notified with enough time. “Just recently been told who the witness is today,” the 7:30 am post read. Mr. Trump added, “This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare… No Judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way.” The post was deleted before the proceeding began at 9:30 am. 

Defense attorney Mr. Blanche had raised the issue with the judge on Monday when he said, “We still don’t know the next witness.” 

It is common courtesy to give the opposing team at least a weekend to prepare for the witnesses scheduled for the following week, an appeals court lawyer, who prefers to remain anonymous, told the Sun on Tuesday evening. It appears, he said, that the district attorney is concerned with safety for his witnesses, which is why he has chosen not to give the defense the names until the day he calls them to the stand.       

The trial resumes on Thursday