Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Wednesday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether the gag order imposed on former President Trump at his New York gag trial violates his constitutional rights.
Trump has repeatedly complained about his treatment by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Juan Merchan, who imposed a gag order on the former president to prevent him from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff or the judge’s family. That doesn’t stop him from attacking Merchan or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
Merchan found Trump in contempt multiple times for violating the order and even threatened to send him to prison over it.
Vance argues the order appears to violate a Reconstruction-era statute that Congress passed more than 100 years ago to protect the rights of freed slaves, but which he says now applies to Trump’s situation in New York.
“These statutes appear to have a lot to say about the conduct of Juan Merchan, the New York judge and Democratic political donor who created a kangaroo court for Donald Trump in Manhattan,” Vance wrote in a May 29 letter to Festão.
The Ohio senator says “at least an investigation is warranted,” pointing out that Justice Department prosecutors are well familiar with the federal statutes in question because they charged Trump with one of them for conspiring against voting rights in connection with his efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Vance says Merchan’s gag order “imposed prior restraint on the protected speech of a former president who is now leading the presidential poll for the upcoming election.”
And he says the judge made Trump “powerless to question the credibility of the witnesses testifying against him.”
He further argues that Merchan was “shameless” and “bent over backwards to allow the prosecution to present whatever evidence they wanted” but “acted firmly against defense evidence at every opportunity.”
“In a ridiculous example, he ruled that President Trump’s lawyers could not even mention to the jury that President Trump’s accusation is ‘new, unusual or unprecedented’ – even though, at that time, liberal law professors, newspapers and former prosecutors having all admitted that Bragg’s prosecution depended on a ‘novel interpretation’ of state law,” he wrote.
And Vance says prosecutors repeatedly urged the judge to deprive Trump of his “First Amendment rights to judicial proceedings and oral argument,” making them — he argues — possible co-conspirators.
He asked Garland to let him know by June 28 whether the Justice Department will investigate the matter.
“If you do not open an investigation, please let me know if you will consider issuing a document retention order to allow a future administration to consider taking over the case,” he wrote in conclusion.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
