Exclusive: Donald Trump’s legal team expects a Manhattan judge to impose a GAG order on Donald Trump on Monday and is staffing up for a First Amendment battle
- Trump could be gagged by a Manhattan court on Monday ahead of hearing
- His legal team is considering hiring a First Amendment lawyer, a source said
- It comes as Trump prepares to fly to New York to be formally arraigned
Donald Trump‘s legal team is preparing for a New York judge to slap a gag order on the former president on Monday, DailyMail.com can reveal, a day before he is due to be arrested in Manhattan.
The extraordinary move to potentially silence a candidate for president will likely enflame Trump’s supporters as he prepares to fly out of his Florida home.
‘The Trump legal team now thinks that the Manhattan judge will take the unprecedented step of silencing the presidential frontrunner with an unconstitutional gag order tomorrow,’ said a source.
‘The Trump legal team is considering adding a First Amendment lawyer to the effort to combat this and will fight it all the way.’
On Sunday morning, Trump’s campaign announced that the former president would make a speech at his Mar-a-Lago home on Tuesday evening after returning from New York.
Trump, 76, has lashed out several times on Truth Social following the announcement on Thursday that he would face charges over alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels
That is now in doubt.
At the same time it emerged that his legal team will lodge a motion to immediately dismiss the case against him.
‘We will take the indictment. We will dissect it,’ Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina told CNN on Sunday morning.
‘The team will look at every, every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge.
‘And of course, I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming because there’s no law that fits this.’
Taken together they mark the latest twists in a fast running story that exploded into life on Thursday when it emerged that a Manhattan jury voted to indict the former president.
The charges remain sealed but are believed to relate to a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult movie actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for pursuing a case that had been dropped by federal prosecutors.
Manhattan’s Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has been described as a ‘no-nonsense judge’ who wouldn’t hesitate to jail someone for a breach of a gag order
He has branded it a ‘witch hunt’ by the Democrats but would be unable to post anything similar if the restriction is put in place
And he has also turned his fire on Manhattan’s Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who will hear the case and is believed to be preparing a gag order.
‘The campaign is preparing for this scenario,’ said a Trump campaign source.
It will only add to Trump’s anger at Merchan, who previously presided over last year’s tax fraud case when the Trump Organization was found guilty.
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump said the judge had ‘railroaded’ his former CFO to try to get him to take a plea deal.
‘The judge “assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a “Case” that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME,’ he wrote.
Legal experts raised the idea of a gag order at the end of last week.
Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice, said it would mean that discussing the case outside the courtroom would mean punishment for criminal contempt – which under New York law could leave him facing a fine of up to $1,000, 30 days of jail time or sometimes both.
Levin told Insider: ‘I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case.
‘Gag orders are very common in criminal cases, particularly in cases where there is an enormous amount of pretrial publicity like this one.’
