Donald Trump Could Be Denied Access to Juror Identities at Trial

Donald Trump will be banned from viewing the names of jurors in the Stormy Daniels hush money case if he continues his disruptive behavior, a judge warned.

In the Monday order, Judge Juan Merchan agreed with prosecutors that the former president "be expressly warned that any statutory right he may have to access to juror names will be forfeited by continued harassing or disruptive conduct."

Several legal commentators said that Merchan's latest order is a powerful tool to stop Trump from violating a gag order placed on him. In an expanded gag order on April 1, Merchan twice warned Trump that he may withhold juror names from him.

Without information on jurors in a case, a defendant would be placed at severe disadvantage because he or she would have little information to potentially have an unfavorable juror removed.

In the same order, Merchan warned that Trump "is hereby put on notice that he will forfeit any statutory right he may have to juror names if he engages in any conduct that threatens the safety and integrity of the jury or jury selection process."

New York prosecutors charged Trump with 34 felonies, accusing him of falsifying business records and concealing hush-money payments made to Daniels, an adult-film star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of his criminal charges and insists that his legal difficulties, which include a number of recent civil judgments, are part of a coordinated effort by Democrats to block the presumptive Republican presidential nominee from returning to the White House.

Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Tuesday.

University of California, Los Angeles law professor Harry Litman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday that Merchan had come up with a good way to stop Trump from disrupting the case.

"There's always the question of how to regulate Trump, and what threats short of jail to impose. Merchan comes up with a good one: If Trump doesn't control himself, he will lose access to juror names at trial. That's a real strategic disadvantage," Litman wrote.

Roger Parloff, senior editor at the legal website Lawfare, wrote on X on Monday that Trump and his lawyers "would, by statute, normally have access so they can research open source info about [jurors], like political registration & social media accounts."

"So that's a meaningful sword of Damocles now dangling over Trump's head," Parloff wrote.

Monday's amended gag order includes Merchan's daughter, Loren Merchan, and said Trump had a history of attacking the family members of judges and attorneys.

"This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose," Merchan wrote. "It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are 'fair game,' for Defendant's vitriol."

Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Thursday to criticize Merchan and his daughter. One of Trump's posts focused on an image published by an account on X, supposedly run by Loren Merchan, which shared a mock-up image of the former president behind bars. The account, however, is no longer linked to Loren Merchan and appears to have been taken over by another person since she deleted it last year.

In a court filing on Monday, Trump's lawyers acknowledged that the account was "attributed" to Loren Merchan, but that the post in question was not published by the judge's daughter.

Monday's filing from Trump's legal team was in response to a request from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to clarify whether Merchan's order protects family members of the judge and court staff from facing attacks by the former president. The district attorney's office argued that Trump's "dangerous, violent, and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity" of the case, and that Merchan's original order should be expanded to protect family members of the court.

"This Court should immediately make clear that defendant is prohibited from making or directing others to make public statements about family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order," Bragg's filing on Monday read.

In his responding order on Monday, Merchan said that Trump is still permitted to criticize the court and the district attorney but cannot criticize their family members.

Trump last week had made two social media posts denouncing Merchan's daughter as a "super liberal" operative for Democrats.