To lose properly, Trump must be able to speak freely. NY judge should toss gag order | Opinion

Donald Trump and his supporters are again complaining about a New York judge’s gag order on the reality-challenged former president. Though both the U.S. Supreme Court and a New York appeals court have declined to weigh in, the order restricting Trump’s speech should go in the trash, especially as we near the final two months before Election Day.

The First Amendment fracas was set in motion before Trump’s trial on allegations of creating false business records to cover up paying a porn star hush money during the 2020 presidential campaign even began.

Judge Juan Merchan made a $20 donation to a Democratic-aligned political group and gave $15 to the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential campaign against Trump. Such gifts are banned for federal judges but allowed for state judges under New York’s ill-considered rules.

Three times Trump’s lawyers have argued that the donations create a conflict of interest for Merchan, and that the judge should recuse himself from the case where Trump was convicted and faces a September sentencing hearing. And three times the judge has ruled against them, though over time he has narrowed the order to cover only attacks on court employees and their families.

The latest move is a congressional subpoena to Authentic Campaigns, a Democratic fundraising and communications firm where the judge’s daughter works and which features on its website work the company did for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign.

For any normal person, like a judge, his daughter or other court employees Trump has lambasted for their bias against him, attacks from the former president are not to be taken lightly. While Trump sticks to blasts of the rhetorical kind, his followers promise far worse. Threats of death, rape and more have driven some from their homes and required others to get security.

While Trump’s speech and his followers’ reactions are often vile, that is when free speech is most important. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled in case after case, that campaign speech no matter how false or unhinged or uncomfortable it may be, is on the “highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”

And while Trump has a tendency to veer off into fantasy land, at the core of his case against Merchan, Trump has a reasonable point. Couldn’t the Democrats who run New York’s government have found a judge who didn’t give money to Biden-Harris 2020 to hear the case? Isn’t it a coincidence that the judge’s daughter works at a Democratic campaign firm?

The cases against Trump about hush money, classified documents and election interference working their way through the judicial system have already embroiled the Supreme Court in controversy and are among the most consequential in our history.

Yes, the campaign donation was a paltry $15. But wouldn’t it have been wiser to find a judge without even the appearance of even a teensy bias against Trump? Merchan could have recused at the beginning with little delay in the case. If he had, we wouldn’t be here now.

If Trump thinks that the judicial system has been rigged and is out to get him, there is nothing more important than for the public to hear him out — without gag orders. At the end of the day, the American people are going to be the judges of whether Trump slinks off into ignominy or returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to wreak havoc.

I don’t think the public is going to buy the argument that fifteen bucks is the smoking gun of a national conspiracy to railroad Trump. The former president certainly doesn’t deserve constitutional protections like those offered by the First Amendment, but by birth he should have them nonetheless.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent. Follow him on X: @DavidMastio or email him at dmastio1@yahoo.com