Donald Trump is free to speak again: the gag order in the New York case was lifted

An appeals court temporarily lifted the gag order imposed on Donald Trump in the New York fraud case. On Wednesday, his legal team had filed an emergency lawsuit against the legal muzzle set by Judge Arthur Engoron, whose ability to serve as an “impartial fact finder” in the case against the former president was questioned.

Oral arguments for the appeal took place on Thursday and ended in victory for Trump’s lawyers. Judge David Friedman, a member of the first department of the appellate division, highlighted constitutional concerns about Trump’s right to free speech.

“Considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue, an interim stay is granted,” Judge Friedman wrote.

“His (Friedman’s) extraordinary expansion of that order both limits and chills advocacy on Petitioners’ behalf and precludes counsel on pain of contempt from making a record of misconduct and bias in a public courtroom,” the Republican’s legal team wrote in its lawsuit.

The gag order was imposed in October after the former president commented about Judge Engoron’s legal assistant.

What is Trump being accused of in New York?

The former president, his children Donald Jr. and Eric, as well as senior executives of the Trump Organization, were accused of participating in a scheme in which they allegedly used “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” for more than a decade, intending to inflate Trump’s net worth and obtain more favorable loan conditions.

Trump denied this action, and his lawyers argued that the assessments referred to by Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, were the product of his business ability.