A federal judge said Monday she will issue a “partial” oral injunction against Donald Trump, who she blasted for making inflammatory statements she said could endanger court staff.
The gag prohibits him from attacking special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing his prosecution, as well as witnesses in the case and the judge himself, as well as family members.
Judge Tanya Chutkan outlined the outlines of her order in court after he added his public outbursts Bill BarrGen. Mark Milley, by herself, and by the ‘rat-infested’ Washington DC where he will be tried.
“I can’t think of any other criminal case where a defendant is allowed to call a prosecutor disabled or a thug,” Judge Chutkan said as she announced the order she would impose.
Trump’s position as a candidate in a political campaign “does not give him carte blanche” to “offend violence” or implicitly “encourage violence against public servants who are simply doing their jobs,” the judge said.
Describing her order after a sometimes heated hearing, Chutkan called out Trump’s posts in which he called special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against him, a “thug” and “delusional.” As she noted during the hearing, Trump attacked Smith again just last night.
Her order prohibits her from reproducing any statements in public ‘targeting the special counsel, his staff, including government counsel here today,’ she said.
Her order will also bar “any statement publicly targeting any of my staff or any other court staff” — after Trump’s post brought up the judge’s top clerk in his New York fraud case and her Instagram account.
Trump attorney John Lauro (R) has blasted a proposed oral order on ex-Trump as unconstitutional and unworkable
“It should go without saying” that the order also applies to family members, after Trump named Jack Smith’s wife in a post attacking him.
Trump can claim he is being “unfairly prosecuted,” Judge Chutkan said, and he is free to strike at the District of Columbia — where the jury will be drawn in his Jan. 6 case.
But she noted that his comments about D.C., which Trump called “rat-infested” in one post brought to court Monday, would be relevant during his later appeals, effectively undermining his arguments that he didn’t get a fair trial there. can’t get
She said any issues with Trump’s attacks on D.C., which he called a “dirty and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation,” as he pushes against his impeachment, could be handled through voir dire, the process where lawyers present jurors for possible bias investigation.
Former President Trump is prohibited from attacking Jack Smith, the judge or witnesses
“The accused repeatedly refers to special legal representative Jack Smith as crazy and his staff as thugs and he did it again last night,” Judge Chutkan said in court.
Trump called special counsel Jack Smith a “leaky, crooked and deranged prosecutor” just hours before the judge issued an oral order barring attacks on him.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) appeared in court and blew the gag while it was being considered
The judge did not release detailed language of her order, which will come later. It came after a heated hearing where Trump’s lawyer John Lauro said a proposed gag was unconstitutional on its face and argued it would be impossible to delineate or supervise.
Trump attacked the proposed gag — as well as Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan — in a post on his Truth Social platform Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. The judge apparently saw this and brought it up in court.
‘Tomorrow is a big day for Democracy. A leaky, crooked and deranged prosecutor, Jack Smith, who has a terrible record of failure, asks a highly partisan Obama-appointed judge, Tanya Chutkan, who should recuse herself based on the horrible things she said, to to silence me, through the use of a powerful GAG ORDER, making it impossible for me to criticize those doing the silencing, namely Crooked Joe Biden, and his corrupt and armed DOJ & FBI,’ Trump wrote.
‘They want to take away my First Amendment rights, and my ability to fight and defend myself. In other words, they want to cheat and interfere in the 2024 presidential election. Something like this has never happened in our country. This is strictly Banana Republic kind of “stuff”. These political hacks and thugs are destroying our country. Let’s see what happens in Judge Chutkan’s courtroom on Monday. Will America survive or not? I will be campaigning in the Great State of Iowa, where I lead by 50 points!!!’
After grilling opposing attorneys for two hours and expressing her concerns about possible security threats from some of Trump’s comments, the judge indicated she was willing to act.
“I’m not confident that we won’t be here all the time without some kind of restriction,” she said.
At one point, the judge even gave hypothetical jobs to lawyers Trump might issue against rivals like his own former attorney general, Bill Barr.
She asked if Trump could include within a proposed gag order that ‘Bill Barr should be executed for his very treasonous acts.’
Chutkan asked about Trump’s posts attacking special counsel Jack Smith as “disturbed,” as well as his posts attacking her and DC — the site of her trial set to begin in March.
“The government’s sole objective with this motion is to ensure the fair administration of justice in this case by preventing extrajudicial rulings that prejudice the trial,” it said.
Lauro called the gag order “prior restriction on content-based political speech that is the highest degree of constitutional protection.” He defended many of Trump’s comments, even as he admitted he may not have made them himself, including attacks on the ‘Department of Injustice.’
“He doesn’t have the right to say and do exactly as he wants,” Chutkan said during many clashes with Lauro, noting that Trump is a criminal defendant who must follow the conditions of his release.
“These prosecutors decided to bring this case in the middle of a political campaign,” Lauro said, repeatedly testing the judge’s patience by asking that the trial she had set for March 4 be postponed.
‘The easiest solution to all this is an obvious one: … to postpone the matter (until) after the presidential election. This is the solution.’, he said.
Lauro repeatedly pushed back on how to enforce an injunction that would prevent Trump from saying anything that would “disparage” a potential witness or influence the jury pool.
“How to enforce an order in the middle of a campaign is impossible under the circumstances,” he said.
Donald Trump GAGGED in January 6 case: Judge Chutkan tells ex-president he can’t attack witnesses, court staff or Jack Smith and his family after he repeatedly called him deranged
