(DCNF)—Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said Tuesday that an expanded gag order against former President Donald Trump was an indication that “things are rigged” against the former president.
New York judge Juan Merchan imposed the expanded gag order Monday after the former president criticized the judge’s daughter in multiple posts on Truth Social, including one linking to a New York Post report on Loren Merchan’s firm helping Democratic causes and candidates raise at least $93 million off Trump’s indictment. McCarthy said the daughter’s fundraising looked like “a conflict of interest.”
“What they claim to be worried about is the administration of justice and what they are saying is that when Trump makes statements about particular people, even though he doesn’t threaten them or direct anyone to do anything, that his followers end up intimidating those people and therefore it makes it difficult to administer justice in the case,” McCarthy told Fox News host Bill Hemmer. “The reason this is an issue is because they’ve scheduled these trials to commence prior to the election and they’ve intentionally put them in the heat of an election campaign. Trump didn’t ask for that. It is what the court did in conjunction with the district attorney.”
“Trump is running for president,” McCarthy continued. “He’s got a First Amendment right to campaign and he’s got a right to make his defense and he may be right or wrong, but it is perfectly appropriate to make a defense this is a political prosecution against him and the judge is biased. He didn’t pick any member of the judge’s family out of the sky. He chose the one who is a Democratic political operative, which is undeniable even if the judge doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Merchan’s daughter’s firm, Authentic Campaigns, helped Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a prominent and outspoken Trump critic, raise over $20 million, the Post reported.
“Trump has a right to run for president, he’s got right to make his defense,” McCarthy told Hemmer. “He shouldn’t be inhibited in what he can say.”
“I think it’s obvious that things are rigged against him,” McCarthy added. “Nobody who is honest would say this case that Bragg has brought would have been brought against anybody except Donald Trump, where he has taken a misdemeanor business records transaction in which there was no victim. No one was harmed, and turned it into 34 felony counts which statutorily amount to over a century of potential imprisonment.”
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