Former US President Donald Trump was issued a decide’s gag order on Tuesday barring him from publicly commenting about witnesses and courtroom employees ahead of his April 15 legal trial involving hush money paid to a porn star.

Justice Juan Merchan granted a request by the workplace of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s prosecuting Trump, the previous president and now the Republican candidate to problem President Joe Biden for the White House.

“His statements were threatening, inflammatory, denigrating,” Merchan wrote, referring to some of Trump’s earlier assaults on witnesses, prosecutors and judges in numerous authorized circumstances he faces.

“Such inflammatory extrajudicial statements undoubtedly risk impeding the orderly administration of this court,” wrote the decide, who presides within the New York State Supreme Court.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise information to cover reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 fee to porn star Stormy Daniels to purchase her silence earlier than the 2016 election a few sexual encounter she claimed to have had with Trump a decade earlier.

Trump denies having an encounter with Daniels, whose actual title is Stephanie Clifford.

In an announcement, Trump marketing campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung known as the gag order unconstitutional.

“American voters have a fundamental right to hear the uncensored voice of the leading candidate for the highest office in the land,” Cheung mentioned.

Trump’s legal professionals beforehand mentioned a gag order would go away him defenseless towards assaults by political opponents over the case.

Tuesday’s order blocked Trump from talking about witnesses regarding their function within the case. It additionally blocked Trump from commenting on courtroom employees, prosecutors apart from Bragg himself, and any of their relations if these feedback are supposed to intervene with the case.

Merchan dominated on March 7 that jurors have been to stay nameless besides to Trump, his legal professionals, prosecutors and a handful of others, after prosecutors highlighted Trump’s historical past of publicly deriding trial jurors and grand jurors.

The looming hush money trial is one of 4 legal circumstances Trump is confronting ahead of the Nov. 5 US election. It might be the one one to achieve trial earlier than the election. He has pleaded not responsible to all and known as them politically motivated.

The gag order was much like restrictions a federal decide imposed final 12 months in a legal case over Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden.

In a separate, civil fraud case introduced by New York Attorney General Letitia James, one other state decide fined Trump $15,000 final 12 months for twice violating a gag order towards publicly commenting about courtroom employees.

Trump faces state legal fees in Georgia over efforts to reverse his 2020 loss to Biden within the state, and federal legal fees in Florida over his dealing with of delicate authorities paperwork after leaving the White House in 2021.

Trump is interesting a $454.2 million judgment within the civil fraud case for misstating the values of his household actual property firm’s properties to dupe lenders. On March 25, a mid-level state appeals courtroom paused that judgment so long as Trump posts a smaller $175 million bond inside 10 days.