Let’s stipulate that Donald Trump has only his own uncontainable gutter impulses to blame for the probably unconstitutional limited gag order imposed on him by Arthur Engoron, the elected progressive-Democratic New York State judge who is presiding over elected progressive-Democratic attorney general Letitia James’s civil fraud trial against the former president.
Even so, the $5,000 fine Judge Engoron imposed on Trump today for violating the gag order is patently pretextual — intended, more than anything else, to promote the Democratic narrative that Trump’s obnoxious words incite violence, even when he does not call for violence and when his statements don’t come close to meeting the legal test for incitement.
To recap, Trump is ballistic over the civil fraud lawsuit that (a) has been brought by James, who repulsively campaigned on a vow to use the powers of her office to sue him into submission, and (b) is presided over by Engoron, who made his contempt for Trump (“just a bad guy”) known even before the suit was filed, and who ruled against Trump on the state’s main cause of action (a pattern of deceit in overvaluing his assets) before the ongoing trial even started — such that the only mystery remaining is how much Engoron is going to let James run up the score (she is seeking $250 million or more in disgorgement penalties despite the fact that there are no fraud victims in the case).
In his anger, Trump lashed out at Engoron and James by posting on his social media site a photo of the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, in a friendly embrace with the Democrats’ Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a James ally who has praised her hounding of Trump. The post described Greenfield as “Schumer’s girlfriend.” Naturally, there is no evidence that this is so: Staffers of the 73-year-old senator (who has been married for 43 years) indignantly denied it, and the photo is of a kind that high-profile pols and celebs take all the time (there are probably many more such fan photos of Trump than of Schumer).
Engoron issued an order that forbade Trump from making derogatory public remarks about court staff. It’s a dumb order — Trump’s remarks, though obnoxious, were constitutionally protected, and the trial is a bench trial so there is no danger of improperly influencing a jury.
Trump being Trump, there was of course no apology. But far from being defiant, he honored Engoron’s order — or at least appears to have done so — by removing the post immediately. It turns out, however, that a picture of the post was placed on Trump’s campaign website — it is not clear by whom. Engoron learned of this on Thursday evening — over two weeks after the gag order — and contacted Trump’s legal team, after which the offending campaign message was quickly taken down. In court today, Trump’s lead attorney, Christopher Kise, apologized to Engoron on Trump’s behalf, plausibly explaining that the failure to remove the campaign post earlier was inadvertent.
Engoron could have just let it go at that, but, like Trump, he seems to lack self-control (as well as the feature that causes most of us to refrain from expressing every thought that pops into our heads). Engoron admonished Kise, “Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions” which include “possibly imprisoning him.”
You might be wondering why a judge would think “far more severe sanctions,” such as imprisonment, would be appropriate in a civil case for a former United States president over an “unintentional” transgression. But Engoron was just getting warmed up. “In the current overheated climate,” he emoted, “incendiary untruths can, and in some cases already have, led to serious physical harm, and worse.”
And there you have it, the Democratic insurrection story line: Though he may not have committed actionable incitement, Trump’s “incendiary untruths” about the 2020 election incited a riot (something he has also never been charged with doing), in which Capitol security personnel were seriously injured “and worse” – i.e., killed, according to the Democrats’ January 6 lore. Although there is no evidence that police lost their lives in the riot, and no one has been charged with killing a police officer in connection with the riot, Democrats nevertheless claim that officers who committed suicide in the days, weeks, and months after the riot were killed in the line of duty.
With all the serious things going on in the world, you’d think we could maybe take a few days off from farce. Fat chance.