The judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case on Monday declared his daughter off-limits to the former president’s rancor, expanding a gag order days after Trump assailed and made false claims about her on social media.
Judge Juan M. Merchan said his original gag order — barring Trump from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case — did not include Merchan’s family members, but his subsequent attacks warranted including them.
“This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” Merchan wrote. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game,’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”
Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is a Democratic political consultant. Prosecutors had urged Merchan to clarify or expand his gag order after Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Loren Merchan “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump,’” and wrongly accused her of posting a social media photo showing him behind bars.
Hey don’t feel bad, technology takes a while to get used to, and there’s just so dang much information it’s easy to get confused.
There’s a couple handy search engines to help you find stuff though, I used Google.com, and there you can quickly find dozens of articles.
Now, there’s a trick to knowing which one to trust, but checking several different sources and see if they say the same thing is a good start.
Here’s a representative summary I found from a good, reliable source - the BBC. It explains what happened, what can be proven to be illegal, and how it came to light.
Basically, Stormy Daniels whistleblowed on national TV. Trump committed crimes in funneling money. His attorney Michael Cohen went to jail for doing the thing, and has also provided evidence and leads against Trump.