Trump may have violated the hush money gag order while ripping his guilty verdict

Donald Trump discussed two witnesses in the criminal case against him Friday while complaining about his conviction, comments that could violate the judge's gag order against him.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Trump's commentary on the witnesses. Judge Juan Merchan's April order barred Trump from "making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding."

Trump mentioned Robert Costello, a witness who testified on Trump’s behalf, by name during his remarks at Trump Tower, and also went on at length about his former attorney Michael Cohen, a key witness whose name he did not use but was clearly the person he was referring to.

“This was a highly qualified lawyer. Now I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order, but you know he’s a sleazebag. Everybody knows that. Took me a while to find out,” Trump said, also pushing back on Cohen's description of himself as a "fixer." "He did work, but he wasn’t a fixer. He was a lawyer. You know they like to use the word fixer. He wasn’t a fixer. He was a lawyer at the time," Trump said.

Trump praised Costello, an attorney who was in talks to represent Cohen in 2018 and has since become a fierce Cohen critic, as a “fine man” who was mistreated by the judge when he testified.

Merchan reprimanded Costello, a veteran New York defense lawyer, outside the presence of the jury for being disrespectful on the stand, including visibly and audibly reacting to the prosecution’s objections and Merchan’s rulings. “As a witness in my courtroom, if you don’t like my rulings, you don’t say, ‘Jeez,’”