Trump increasingly relies on allies to deliver the attack lines the gag order bars him from uttering
Donald Trump has been calling the politicians who make the pilgrimage to stand behind him in the New York City court where he is on trial his âsurrogatesâ â as they push the lines of personal attacks that he has been barred from making because of a gag order.
The coordination and organization between Trump and those supporters have stoked questions about whether the remarks by the cast of Republicans amount to a violation of Trump’s gag order. But legal experts say that it’s difficult for prosecutors to argue a violation has occurred when Trump isn’t the one doing the talking and that, even if they were successful, it might trigger a consequence they’re trying to avoid: sending Trump to jail.
Trumpâs gag order â for which he has already been found in criminal contempt for violating 10 times â bars him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff members, as well the families of those people and of the judge presiding over the case. State Judge Juan Merchan, in citing Trump for the violations, warned that further missteps could result in his being sent to jail, even as prosecutors have insisted they aren’t asking for him to be locked up.Â
Unable to level his favorite attack lines, Trump has attacked the gag order itself and Merchan, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom remain fair game for his ire under the order.
Allies like Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who made a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination last year, took aim at the prosecutionâs star witness, Michael Cohen, when he took the stand last week, accusing him of âsystematicallyâ lying, and swiping at Merchan, âwho has family members making millions of dollars as a Democratic operative, including through fundraising using this trial as a basis,â a reference to Merchan’s daughter, who wasn’t initially covered by the gag order but was then added.
But Trumpâs allies arenât bound by the order â only he is, said Ken White, a federal criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles.Â
âFor it to be a violation, he has to be directing them to do these things,â White said. âSaying âIâm doing this because he canâtâ is not enough.â
Trump’s campaign insists the effort isn’t coordinated. âAll guests volunteer to come to court to support their friend, President Trump, and are not invited by the campaign,â a spokesperson said.
Yet even as the soundbites from Trumpâs surrogates echo many of his earlier criticisms, prosecutors have largely held their fire. Legal experts warn prosecutors risk suddenly confronting a circumstance theyâve said they wish to avoid â seeing Trump jailed. On the other hand, they risk falling flat.Â
White said that even if prosecutors could show Trump is responsible, by, say, somehow proving he edited his surrogates’ comments before they delivered them, as one reporter alleged on MSNBC, the outcome may be self-defeating.Â
âThe DA and the judge want to finish,â White said. âThey donât want a sideshow; they donât want the extreme disruption of raising this again and possibly even taking the former president into custody.
âThat would be a huge derail of the case,â he added.
Robert Hirschhorn, a lawyer and trial consultant, said of the rollout: âWhether Team Trump told them ‘these are the points we want you to make,’ they were smart enough not to have Trump tell them, so theyâve insulated him. I think if the state moved for a violation of the gag order, they would lose.
âThe only option really left for the judge is to sanction Trump with some kind of incarceration, even if itâs for an hour or two. And I just donât think the judge is going to do it,â Hirschhorn said.Â
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum joined Ramaswamy in jabbing at Merchanâs daughter. When asked, his supporters have said they joined Trump in court of their own volition, not at his direction. But they aren’t arriving on their own, standing in line and entering through the public entrance â several have been seen or acknowledged traveling with Trump to the courthouse and remaining part of the security “bubble” the Secret Service remains around him.
Another group of allies joined Trump in court Monday. Among them was law professor Alan Dershowitz, who could be heard during a break speaking heatedly in the courtroom with Norm Eisen, a CNN contributor and legal analyst and Obama ethics adviser in the White House, who was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trumpâs first impeachment. Developer and longtime Trump friend Steve Witkoff, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Trump administration official Kash Patel were also seated right behind Trump in court Monday.
Those who traveled with him or sat in seats also coordinated media remarks outside the court building â where they often uttered the words Trump himself is prohibited from saying.
The rotating task of surrogates has drawn attention in the courtroom.
During a meeting between Merchan and lawyers â known as a sidebar, conducted where the jury can’t hear but transcribed for the record â the prosecution asked that Trumpâs surrogates and their security details not be allowed to enter or exit the courtroom during questioning. A defense attorney for Trump, Todd Blanche, said he didnât have any control over them.
âYour honor, I have less than zero control over what is happening on anything or anyone thatâs behind me when I am crossing a witness,â Blanche said. âI donât have any control over â I mean, they are members of the public.â
âAre you expecting anybody else today?â Merchan asked.Â
âYour honor, I have no idea,â Blanche responded. âIâm not expecting anybody else. But I might be wrong.â
‘They come from all over’
The parade of surrogates has taken on the sheen of a campaign in other ways. In a new online video advertisement calling for campaign donations, Ramaswamy appears in the courthouse alongside Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills of Florida and members of Trumpâs family, including son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Trump can be heard in the background speaking to the media cameras.Â
âWe are here in court with President Trump standing with him, but we need you to stand with him, too,â Donalds says.
While some of Trumpâs allies arrived in his motorcade, others have entered along with the public and were spotted in the overflow room, such as Jeffery Clark, a former Justice Department official who was indicted alongside Trump in a separate criminal trial in Georgia, where they are accused of crimes related to the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor and House member from South Carolina, entered the courtroom alongside reporters and members of the public Monday.
Outside the courtroom, Trump has amplified his alliesâ defenses, heaping praise on them â and even referring to others’ efforts back in Washington.
âI do have a lot of surrogates, and they are speaking very beautifully,â Trump said, adding that âthey come from all over.âÂ
âAnd they think this is the biggest scam theyâve ever seen,â he said. âTheyâre all up in arms.â
White said Trump is an unusual litigant because he appears to be focused almost entirely on what’s happening outside the courtroom. Inside the courtroom, he has been spotted reading and annotating articles and polls.Â
âHis strategies tend to be about public narrative and politics and fundraising and his base, not about what would serve him best in the courtroom and of traditional legal strategy,â White said.
One day after House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded records for a lead attorney in the case whom he accused of having spent years fixated on prosecuting Trump, Trump elevated the allegations himself.
Speaking in the hallway outside Merchan’s courtroom, Trump said: âThis all comes out of the White House and the Department of Justice. This is all them. In fact, a lead person from the DOJ is running the trial.â
Trump is all but daring the prosecution to go after him by having his surrogates out front skirting the very edge of the gag order by using a âworkaroundâ to broadcast his message while he sticks by the letter of the rule, Hirschhorn said.
âIt is crystal clear what he is doing. He is trying to turn it into a political trial,â Hirschhorn said of Trump, who is casting around for a sympathetic ear, perhaps even inside the room.Â
âIt might be that there is at least one person on that jury that identifies as Republican, and if so, itâs a play right to that juror,â he said.Â
White said: âYouâd have to be crazy to antagonize the judge in your criminal case. Most people wouldnât do it. But heâs always been focused on his public image and his ego and the political narrative to the detriment of his courtroom strategy.â