The Supreme Court has declined to lift the gag order imposed on President-elect Donald Trump in his hush money case.
In a new order list released Monday, the Court denied an application seeking to appeal the gag order set by New York Judge Juan Merchan.
“The application for stay addressed to Justice [Samuel] Alito and referred to the Court is denied,” the order list said.
During his trial in New York, Trump was put under a gag order by Merchan. He is prohibited from speaking about jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, court staff or members of their family.
It does not bar him from speaking about Merchan or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case against the president-elect. Monday’s Supreme Court decision means the gag order is still in place for now.
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The judge initially granted the gag order in March, before the trial began, at the request of prosecutors. They had argued that the court should take all necessary precautions given Trump’s “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him.”
During the trial, Merchan threatened Trump with jail and fined him $10,000 following repeated violations of the order.
On May 30, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case, which involved a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Daniels says she and Trump previously had a sexual encounter, which he has denied. Trump’s lawyers are appealing the verdict and have asked Merchan to terminate the gag order because the trial is over.
Trump was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction last month, but it was postponed indefinitely. Trump’s team moved to throw out the case entirely last month. If it is ultimately thrown out, the gag order would be lifted and he would be free to discuss those protected by the order.
Several efforts have been made to have the gag order tossed. An appeals court rejected Trump’s own effort to have it lifted in August. That same month, a long-shot bid from Missouri’s attorney general to have the order removed was also turned down by the Supreme Court.
Monday’s decision was made in regard to an application brought by Joseph Nierman, a podcaster known as Good Lawgic. Nierman was also involved in the efforts to oppose a possible gag order in Trump’s Florida classified documents case. Nierman’s application argued that the gag order should be lifted because it silenced the political speech of a presidential candidate.
In response to Monday’s order list, Nierman told Newsweek, “While that Court denied Good Lawgic’s emergency application, we are hopeful it entertains that important claim when it files a standardize application for writ.”
Nierman can resubmit the application to the Supreme Court if the initial justice it’s filed to denies the application. He’s already filed it to Justice Clarence Thomas, who could be more friendly to the application as one of the Court’s most conservative members.
“So potentially, yes, the Court could hear the case at a later date or even grant relief—ending the stay, removing the gag order,” Alex Badas, an associate professor at the University of Houston who specializes in the Supreme Court, told Newsweek.
Badas said his guess is that the Court will ultimately deny the application as part of its efforts to stay out of the political limelight. In recent years, the Court’s reputation has suffered significantly as a result of several controversial decisions that the bench’s conservative majority has issued in the last couple of terms.
“This term the Supreme Court has taken on a very small docket, with only a few politically charged cases,” Badas said.
“I doubt the justices want to take on Trump’s gag order and overturn it,” he added. “I think this would further polarize the public’s view of the Court. The gag order will likely end anyway, especially when Trump is sworn in as president. And he would have immunity from any wrongdoings in his capacity as president, so a gag order won’t mean much then anyway.
“So, with this in mind, the justices probably do not want to be the party to end the gag order and suffer any kind of political pushback as a result,” Badas said.
Nierman has also filed a separate application to the Supreme Court asking it to lift the gag order, but this argument is “more sweeping and affects every American,” he told Newsweek. That application has been referred to Justice Clarence Thomas, who distributed it to the rest of the bench for conference later this week.
“If not recognized by the Court as an emergency, we will file a standardized application for writ and hope to succeed using the more traditional route,” Nierman said.
“This issue affects every American. If the government has a basis to silence a defendant because ‘his audience is too large’ they can employ that logic not merely to the Trumps of the world with an X audience of 95M, but to your neighbor down the street who has an audience of 950 people,” he said. “They can make that claim against any and every one of us. Historically, when granted that power, that is precisely what governments do.”
Update 12/09/24 1:17 p.m. ET This story was updated with comments from Nierman.
