President Trump will be allowed to criticize a porn star, Stormy Daniels, and one of his former lawyers, Michael Cohen, during Thursday’s presidential debate after the judge presiding over his felony hush-money case partially lifted a gag order. 

Judge Juan Merchan ruled on Tuesday that the 45th president can speak out against witnesses and jurors in the case, handing the former president a partial win just 48 hours before he heads to Atlanta to debate President Biden. 

Trump is still forbidden from criticizing Judge Merchan’s adult daughter, Loren Merchan, a Democratic operative who Trump and his attorneys have cited as an example of why Judge Merchan is biased and should recuse himself from the case. Ms. Merchan has done work for some of Trump’s most ardent opponents, such as Vice President Harris and Congressman Adam Schiff.

Judge Merchan had imposed the gag order on Trump before the trial due to a number of personal attacks the former president levied against staff, family members of staff, jury members, and witnesses. Trump was held in contempt of court several times and fined thousands of dollars for violating the gag order after referring to the jury as “95 percent Democrat” and made disparaging comments about witnesses. Judge Merchan, in court, has mentioned incarceration as a possibility should Trump violate the gag order. Since then, Trump has skated very close to a violation, describing Cohen and Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, as “sleaze bags” without naming them.

Trump continues to be under gag orders in other cases. In the civil case brought against the Trump Organization by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, he is forbidden from criticizing Judge Arthuer Engoron’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, whom the defense in the case had called out for “co-judging” and “rolling her eyes.” He is also under a gag order in the federal case over election interference brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

In the hush-money case, Trump was convicted last month on 34 felony counts related to unlawfully covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Clifford, who was selling her story that she had a one-time sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006. Trump has consistently denied the sexual encounter happened, and denied the charges in the indictment.

During and after his trial, Trump vociferously denounced the gag order as a violation of his right to free speech, and his attorneys argued in their legal filings seeking to have the order lifted that their client, during Thursday’s debate, needed to be allowed to respond to allegations made by trial witnesses.  

The witnesses in question are almost certainly Cohen and Ms. Clifford, who have both made a small industry of mocking and taunting Trump. Ms. Clifford, in a recent paid interview for a British tabloid, said that Trump belonged in prison and that, as part of his sentence, he should be punished with jail and “no golfing.”

Democrats have also been highlighting the former president’s felony convictions in several advertisements. Just on Tuesday, the Biden-Harris campaign released a new T-shirt that highlights a joke the president had made about his predecessor’s trial. 

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The New York Sun. 

Judge Merchan did uphold his restrictions on Trump’s ability to speak about line prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, though the former president is permitted to attack the district attorney himself, Alvin Bragg. 

Trump’s desire to attack his multiple criminal prosecutions has hampered his campaign, his lawyer’s have argued, which could be construed as a kind of election interference. “He can’t just say ‘no comment’ repeatedly when he’s running for president,” Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, said in court on May 2. 

Republicans flocked to the Manhattan courthouse to help defend the former president to the press. They said that they were attending the trial and briefing reporters after the fact because they needed to say what he wasn’t allowed to say. 

“We’re here of our own volition because there are things we can say that President Trump is unjustly not allowed to say,” Congressman Matt Gaetz said in May, standing outside of the courthouse with his House GOP colleagues. “This gag order is to ensure that he cannot defend himself fairly,” Congressman Bob Good said. 

Trump’s former fixer, Cohen, was protected by Judge Merchan as part of the gag order from criticism by Trump. Yet Republicans made sure that Cohen’s own sordid legal history was highlighted even if Trump himself couldn’t make that case. “This guy is a convicted felon who admitted in his testimony that he secretly recorded his former employer, that he only did it once allegedly, and that this was supposed to help Donald Trump,” Senator Vance told reporters outside of court one day. “Does any reasonable, sensible person believe anything that Michael Cohen says?”

Trump is due to be sentenced in the hush money case on July 11, just days before he is scheduled to be certified as the Republican candidate for president. He faces up to four years on each of the 34 felony counts, though his sentence is not expected to be nearly that harsh, and he could get off without any jail time.