Judge Juan Merchan issued a gag order March 26 in an effort to further silence Donald Trump, President Joseph Biden’s main rival among the three main capitalist candidates for the White House.
This assault on free speech is an attempt to rig one of several cases cooked up by Democratic prosecutors and the White House, aimed at jailing Trump and preventing tens of millions from voting for the candidate of their choice.
The factional frenzy against Trump is led by the Democrats, who fear their candidate can’t win by defending his record. It also deals blows to constitutional freedoms won during the First and Second American Revolutions and in working-class battles since. These rights provide vital protection from government interference into union and political activity that workers need and use today, and will need even more in sharper class battles to come.
Merchan’s gag order came in the case brought by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg. His campaign for DA was built on promises he was the best man to bring Trump down. His boast that “I have sued Trump over 100 times,” isn’t true.
After his election, Bragg worked with a group of prosecutors, two of whom had been part of former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s efforts to frame up and impeach Trump for collusion with Moscow. Bragg also tried to come up with a case against the former president for business fraud.
When Bragg ultimately decided not to take the “business fraud” case further, it was picked up by State Attorney General Letitia James, who is now using it to prosecute Trump.
Bragg moved his drive against Trump to the hush money case. He accuses the presidential candidate of falsifying business records — a few checks and ledger entries he signed — to conceal hush money payments to Stephanie Clifford. Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, says she had a brief relationship with Trump many years ago that he denies.
Out of this, Bragg is trying to concoct a felony charge, accusing Trump of “conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.”
Judge gags presidential candidate
Merchan banned Trump from making comments about witnesses in the case, including Clifford and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen; prosecutors other than Bragg; the judge and his family; and prospective jurors. In an attempt to justify the ruling, the judge claims comments Trump made in other legal cases brought by the Democrats were “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating.” Such all-embracing accusations could easily be used to suppress the speech of any opponents of government policy.
On April 1 Merchan extended the gag to block Trump from making comments that expose Merchan’s family’s deep ties to the Democratic Party.
The judge is a registered Democrat and his daughter, Loren Merchan, is president of a Chicago-based consultancy business called Authentic Campaigns. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are clients of her company. Loren Merchan also worked as “director of digital persuasion” for Harris’ failed bid for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Trump’s lawyers say Merchan should recuse himself from the case.
The gag order denies presidential candidate Trump the right to comment on political opponents of his campaign. Trump appealed the order April 8.
Claim Trump mixed up in insurrection
In an April 3 order, the judge denied Trump’s request for a delay while the Supreme Court considers Trump’s claim in another case that he has immunity from prosecution in many instances because he was president. The decision in that case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, could void this prosecution.
Merchan repeatedly calls Smith’s case the “Federal Insurrection Matter.” But Trump faces no charge of insurrection in this case, or any other. Nor do any of the 1,350 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 melee at the Capitol. Smith charges Trump with obstruction and fraud, targeting what he said at a public rally where he urged people to protest peacefully on Jan. 6.
Despite a three-year Justice Department investigation, no one has come up with any credible evidence that Trump orchestrated an insurrection. He was specifically found not guilty of that charge by the Senate in 2021, during one of the Democrats’ failed impeachment attempts.
The capitalist rulers have a long record of using the federal Insurrection Act to attack the labor movement.
President Rutherford Hayes invoked the act in 1877 to use federal troops to put down a nationwide strike by rail workers; Grover Cleveland did the same in 1894 to break the Pullman strike; and Woodrow Wilson invoked it in 1914 to send army units against striking coal miners after company thugs and state troops had massacred 21 miners and family members in Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914.
The history of working-class struggle shows that freedoms won by working people face continual threat from the capitalist rulers. Safeguarding constitutional protections is crucial for the entire labor movement.