On Friday, Donald Trump demanded that the judge in his upcoming hush money trial allow him to keep attacking the judge’s daughter. No, really.
The request came at the end of a long week in which the judge had slapped Trump, a man with more holes in his brain than the prairie dog exhibit at the zoo, with a gag order forbidding him from attacking prosecutors, court staff, witnesses and jurors participating in his upcoming hush money criminal trial. But Trump being Trump, any judge who issues such an order apparently has to specify that Trump also can’t attack literally anyone else even tangentially related to the case: the prosecutors’ families, the judge’s families, all of their pets, their cribbage partners, the people who own the food truck outside the courthouse where the judge picks up a bagel and a cup of coffee on his way into the office in the mornings, the dude who hands out clean towels at their gym …
You get the idea.
Notably, the judge did not mention himself or District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the order, presumably on the theory that Trump would not be dumb enough to publicly threaten a judge who might soon have the opportunity to hand down a criminal sentence on him. Shoot, even the Mafia would just quietly send a threatening letter or behead the judge’s cat as a warning.
Trump, being an irredeemable gasbag, didn’t see anything saying he could not attack the judge’s family also, so he wasted no time in going after both Merchan and Merchan’s daughter, who reportedly is an executive at a digital advertising agency that has done work on Democratic political campaigns and has zip to do with legal proceedings against Trump.
This, to Trump, a man who seemingly lacks the intelligence to successfully operate a doorknob, was evidence that chicanery is afoot.
From NBC News:
“Maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump,'” one of his posts said. He also accused her of having posted a picture of him behind bars on social media — an allegation that appears to have originated from a Trump ally, far right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who’d tweeted out the picture.
Imagine being attacked based on evidence dug up by the likes of Laura Loomer. You might as well attack someone based on whether your cat took a dump on their picture.
Shockingly for all involved, Loomer appears to have gotten it wrong. The social media account has not belonged to Merchan’s daughter for two years:
Al Baker, a spokesman for the state court system, said the X account that had been attributed to Merchan’s daughter was not hers. Baker said the account “no longer belongs to her since she deleted it approximately a year ago. It is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screenname since she deleted the account.”
The handle used in the X profile highlighted by Loomer had been previously associated with Merchan’s daughter in 2022, but the profile Loomer shared said the person joined X in April of 2023, the same month far right news outlets wrote critical stories about the daughter.
The district attorney then sent the judge a letter on Thursday requesting that he clarify the gag order also applied to family members of those involved in the trial. Which one would think is both common sense and the decent thing to do, but no one has ever made the mistake of associating common sense and decency with former President Brainworms.
Trump’s lawyers responded on Friday:
To “clarify or confirm” the meaning of the gag order in the way the People suggest would be to expand it. No expansion is appropriate on the basis of a one-page letter citing only two cases, and where President Trump’s response has been restricted to a single page required to be submitted the following day while President Trump and defense counsel are preparing for trial. Given the sensitivities associated with prior restraints, if the Court wishes to consider such an expansion, a complete opportunity for full adversarial briefing is necessary.
Translation: You want to tell our boy he can’t direct all the anger of his knuckle-dragging minions at someone with no connection to his trial other than being a blood relative of someone involved in it? We’ll demand full briefing on the issue, forcing the prosecutors to take time away from actually working on their case to write briefs and delaying the trial until God knows when.
Sure, Trump is trying to goad the judge into cracking down on him, and yr Wonkette thinks Merchan should call the bluff, toss Trump in jail for violating the gag order, and then tell him You threatened my daughter, go cry to an appeals court about it but your trial still starts on April 15 and you can sit on that seatless toilet and think about it until then, you over-bronzed swine.
That’s why we’re not a judge. Well, one reason.
Then over Easter weekend and well before the judge had responded to the DA’s request, Trump went on the attack again. This time, in addition to a long, all-caps screed on Truth Social in which he accused Bragg of conspiring with the Justice Department to screw him, he posted a link to a shitty New York Post hit piece that included pictures of Judge Merchan’s daughter and accused her firm of making huge piles of money off Trump’s indictments. (No link to the piece because why would you want to read it when we already did that for you?)
Two major Democratic clients of the daughter of the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial have raised at least $93 million in campaign donations — and used the case in their solicitation emails — raising renewed concerns that the jurist has a major conflict of interest.
They also named the firm, which is now probably going to be inundated with death threats if it isn’t already.
As of Monday afternoon, there is no response from the judge. We assume he’s busy watching all of Liam Neeson’s Taken movies and taking copious notes.
Yr Wonkette would also like to raise $93 million for calling Donald Trump an orange-faced baboon.