Hush money judge says Michael Cohen needs to stop talking about Trump

The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in Manhattan has instructed prosecutors to tell Michael Cohen to stop talking about the case and about the former president.

Mr Trump’s attorneys have repeatedly urged New York Justice Juan Merchan find a way to gag the former president’s one-time “fixer” turned nemesis and shameless critic.

Cohen, who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to silence her story about having sex with Mr Trump, is a key witness in the case against the former president, who reimbursed his former attorney in a series of payments falsely lableled as “legal expenses,” according to prosecutors.

He is expected to testify on Monday, among the prosecution’s final witnesses in a case stretching into a fourth week of testimony.

Mr Trump’s former lawyer is “becoming a real problem” throughout the trial, according to defense attorney Todd Blanche.

Cohen “continues to speak publicly about this trial and President Trump,” including in a recent TikTok video “wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of President Trump behind bars” and “announcing that he’s running for Congress,” Mr Blanche told Judge Merchan on Friday.

Mr Blanche said he wants Cohen “prohibited from talking” about the case “like Trump is.

“It’s becoming a problem every single day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this witness, but this witness is allowed to continue to talk,” Mr Blanche said.

“We have no control over what they do, and we have repeatedly, repeatedly, asked the witnesses to do that. Not just Mr Cohen. All the witnesses,” according to Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass.

“If Mr Blanche is asking the court to order the people not to do something, we have already done that,” he told the judge.

The judge found a compromise: Prosecutors should tell him that the judge himself told him to be quiet.

“I will direct the People to communicate to Mr Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements about Mr Trump or anything else related to this case,” Judge Merchan said. “That comes from the bench.”

This is a developing story