Former President Donald Trump’s repeated public attacks on the judge and staff of the New York City court where his civil fraud trial is playing out have led to an onslaught of physical threats and messages containing racist, sexist and antisemitic slurs, according to court records.
One post, on Oct. 3, in which Trump disparaged Judge Arthur Engoron’s principal law clerk, resulted in “hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages that have been transcribed into over 275 single spaced pages,” according to a sworn affidavit from a court security officer.
As the trial nears its third month, attorneys for Trump are asking a state appellate court to lift gag orders against the former president that are intended to prevent him from speaking publicly against the judge and staff of the New York County Supreme Court in Manhattan.
On Wednesday, an attorney for Engoron, Lisa Evans, explained in a court filing why she was strongly opposed to lifting the orders, which an appeals court paused last week while it reviewed the situation.
Evans attached a sworn affidavit from Charles Hollon, an officer with the court system’s threat assessment unit.
Hollon said his team has documented threats against Engoron, his staff and his family members via email, telephone and social media that started before the trial even began.
Trump’s Oct. 3 post supercharged the volume of threats, he said. In the post, Trump shared a photo of the law clerk, Allison Greenfield, standing next to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a Trump foe, and claimed with no evidence that she was Schumer’s “girlfriend” and was secretly running the trial.
Greenfield’s official duties — assisting Engoron by answering questions and providing advice — have attracted negative attention from Trump’s camp as she has been seen passing her notes to the judge during proceedings.
“This rogue judge is a Trump hater. The only one that hates Trump more is his associate up there, this person that works with him, and she’s screaming into his ear,” Trump told reporters in October, apparently referring to Greenfield.
Greenfield “has been subjected to, on a daily basis, harassing, disparaging comments and antisemitic tropes,” Hollon said, noting that Greenfield told him she receives about 20 to 30 calls a day to her personal cellphone and 30 to 50 messages on “combined sites of social media, LinkedIn and two (2) personal email addresses.”
Some of the threats against Engoron and Greenfield “are considered to be serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative,” Hollon said.
Since Engoron first imposed a gag order on Trump in early October, the former president has racked up $15,000 in fines for violations.
Another gag order, issued by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Trump’s federal election interference case, is also under review by an appellate court.