Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed for a gag order on Donald Trump involving his January 6th case before federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, arguing Trump's repeated social media and campaign rally tirades amount to witness intimidation and threats against officers of the court.
Citing threats against individuals former President Donald Trump has targeted, special counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal judge for a narrowly tailored gag order that restricts the 2024 presidential candidate from making certain extrajudicial statements about the election interference case brought against him.
A redacted copy of a government filing — released Friday, after an order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — comes in connection with the election interference case, one of four criminal cases the former president is facing, two of which are federal.
“The defendant has an established practice of issuing inflammatory public statements targeted at individuals or institutions that present an obstacle or challenge to him,” the special counsel's office wrote.
The government said Trump "made clear his intent to issue public attacks related to this case when, the day after his arraignment, he posted a threatening message on Truth Social."
Trump's Aug. 4 post read: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"
Trump, the office wrote, "has made good on his threat," spreading "disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.
"Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution—the judicial system—and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals—the Court, the jury pool, witnesses, and prosecutors," the prosecutors wrote.
At an event in Washington, Trump made his first public remarks on the filing by attacking Smith, arguing that the special counsel "wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment, wants to take away my right of speaking freely and openly."
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, responded earlier Friday by calling the filing "nothing more than blatant election interference because President Trump is by far the leading candidate in this race."
This is hardball stuff on the part of Smith and the DoJ, and of course nobody should be surprised by the part where Trump violated this order almost immediately Friday evening and is risking Chutkan citing him for contempt. In fact, I expect Trump will absolutely push this as far as he can because he wants the process to break down. He wants riots and violence and bloodshed if she does try to put him behind bars, and he's going to all but openly dare her to do so.
At the very least, as Steve M. points out, it's daily free publicity through the primaries and election where Trump gets to martyr himself and get tens of millions of voters on his side.
Maybe Trump will eventually be convicted and imprisoned. But for now, he's playing these people for fools. He engages in harassment and intimidation, and that becomes news; the system tries to rein him in, and that becomes news; he whines that he's being censored, and that's news, too -- and then, if there is a limited gag order, he'll really complain about censorship (news again) and then defy the order (also news). And the court probably won't have the courage to do the one thing that might stop the harassment and intimidation, which is to jail him for a few days, but either way he wins: either he beat the system or he's a political prisoner.
And this is just one of his cases. They're all going to be like this as the trials approach (and then there'll be the trials).
Trump shouldn't be allowed to get away with the things he's done, obviously, but I wonder if the legal system has guaranteed his nomination (and possibly smoothed his path to another general-election win) by rallying right-wingers and right-centrists to his cause. Would he have been easier to beat in the primaries if he'd never been indicted? I think he still would have won the nomination, though I'm not sure. It's obvious that he's coasting to a primary victory because he's up on charges. Let's hope he doesn't coast to a general-election victory for the same reason -- because he's rallied more voters to his side than the lackluster Biden.
This is clearly Trump's plan and it's already rallying his base: the worse of a system-destroying virus he becomes, the more likely he'll be put in a position where he can finish that system off for good. He's all but got the primaries sewn up at this point before a single vote has been cast. If Trump is able to delay any consequences (and let's remember there's an entire political party 100% dedicated to making sure those consequences never materialize) and Republicans are able to impeach Biden for months on end, there's a significant possibility that Trump's going to win and we're all fucked.
The fact that the White House is ready to play and win this game gives me hope however. We have to stand up to this bullshit.
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