The trial concluded nearly a week ago. The jurors have gone home, as have the witnesses. Stormy Daniels has taken her act on the road, literally, and publicly advising Melania Trump to leave her husband now that he's a convict. Both Daniels and Alvin Bragg's star witness Michael Cohen have declared publicly that Donald Trump should get prison time, with Cohen demanding "solitary confinement" for the crime of falsely entering business records. 

With all of the witnesses making their case public, the only person who can't comment is ... Donald Trump himself. Judge Juan Merchan didn't lift the gag order Thursday after recording the guilty verdict, and has yet to respond to a defense motion to vacate it so Trump can respond to the public criticism. 

And if prosecutors get their way, Trump will remain gagged until just before the Republican convention:

Manhattan prosecutors urged a judge Wednesday to keep Donald Trump ’s gag order in place in his hush money criminal case at least until the former president is sentenced in July, opposing a defense request that the restrictions be lifted following his felony convictions last week.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told Judge Juan M. Merchan in a letter that the Manhattan DA’s office opposes any immediate termination of the gag order, which bars Trump from commenting about witnesses, jurors and others tied to the case — but not the judge himself.

The court “has an obligation to protect the integrity of these proceedings and the fair administration of justice at least through the sentencing hearing and the resolution of any post-trial motions,” Colangelo wrote.

Come on, man. You put a case together that used a law never before used for this purpose to turn misdemeanors outside the statute of limitation into felonies, and based your case on a two-time perjurer and a porn star that lost a civil case against Trump and owes him six figures. The judge never bothered to sequester the jury in one of the most publicity-drenched and political prosecutions in memory, among other trial issues. What "integrity" is there to protect?

But even putting that aside, the question remains: What proceedings? The trial is over. There are no jurors to be influenced by public debate. The prosecution's witnesses are actively campaigning in public for specific sentence outcomes while Trump remains gagged. Clearly they seem unconcerned about that, so why would they be concerned about the impact of Trump's public statements to defend himself?

All that is left is the sentencing. If Trump says something that angers the judge, then Merchan can factor that into his sentencing. (If Trump can't restrain himself on that point until July 11, then that's his problem.) But unless Alvin Bragg thinks that Trump is a warlock, then his words at this point will have no impact on the conviction. 

However, the motion from Bragg's office does have a rational purpose, which is the same rational purpose behind the trial itself: to derail Trump's presidential campaign. They want to force him to stop campaigning or at least interfere with his ability to campaign effectively. It's no coincidence that the first presidential debate on June 27 would fall within the extended gag order Bragg and his prosecutors seek in this motion today. 

Assuming that the debate happens at all -- I suspect Joe Biden will back out and claim it beneath the dignity of the office to debate a "convicted felon" -- Biden would be able to keep hammering Trump with the conviction and attempt to bait him into violating a gag order that never should have been issued in the first place. 

With this motion, it now seems clear that Bragg will indeed demand jail time for Trump for supposedly falsifying records, at the same time his office refuses to prosecute violent crimes and demand bail for violent suspects. They want him gagged not to protect the "integrity" of Manhattan courtrooms, but to keep him silenced and off the campaign trail. This is clearly election interference, and just as importantly, a violation of Trump's First Amendment rights to speak on the government case and answer public criticism from his opponents. It's a prior restraint we have never seen before in American politics, and it is utterly offensive to constitutional rights and the priority for free elections. 

Unfortunately, there is no clear mechanism to address this before the sentencing. We will watch this injustice and interference unfold over the next several weeks, unless Merchan has a sudden flash of ethics and puts a stop to it. This should make the stakes in November clearer than ever.