Oct. 16 (UPI) — A Monday court hearing in Washington is set to determine whether former President Donald Trump should be placed under a gag order ahead of his federal election fraud trial due to inflammatory remarks he’s made on social media about the case.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office will call on U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose limited restrictions on what Trump can say publicly in an effort to stop his repeated verbal attacks on court officials and potential witnesses.
The potential for silencing Trump raised immediate legal questions about what consequences the former president would face if he defied the judge’s orders, considering Trump’s penchant for rhetoric and political bravado.
Before now, the former president has defended his commentary as protected free speech, but prosecutors plan to argue that Trump is attempting to contaminate the jury pool and incite the public with phony claims as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
The gag order would prevent Trump and his attorneys from making statements that were likely to stain public perception about the case, while Trump would still be allowed to proclaim his innocence on the campaign trail.
“The defendant’s conduct presents a ‘substantial likelihood of material prejudice’ to these proceedings, and the court can and should take steps to restrict such harmful extrajudicial statements,” said senior assistant special counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom in a motion to the court.
In court papers, Trump defense attorney John Lauro called the gag order an “unconstitutional prior restraint” by the Justice Department, which was designed to derail Trump’s 2024 campaign.
However, prosecutors argued Trump’s rhetoric was serving to stoke violence and called attention to the arrest of a Texas woman who allegedly made death threats against Judge Chutkan following Trump’s indictment in August.
Since being charged, Trump has taken to social media to lash out at the “biased” judge, “deranged” prosecutors, while claiming the justice system is “rigged” against him — leading the judge to warn that she would move up the March trial date if it would limit the damage from the continuing rancor.
The case before Chutkan involves his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 federal election results, which Joe Biden won but Trump falsely claimed to his followers that the process was rigged.
Separately, Trump was indicted this past summer by the same special counsel on 37 counts for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.
In May, Trump was barred from posting evidence to social media about the criminal case in which he faces 34 felony charges related to falsifying records in a hush-money scheme.
In that case, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Juan Merchan declined to issue a gag order against Trump, but did impose restrictions on what Trump could say online about any new information he gleaned through his attorneys before the trail, adding that the court’s ruling did not violate the former president’s First Amendment rights as a 2024 candidate.
In early October, Trump was put under a gag order in his ongoing civil fraud trial, in which New York Judge Arthur Engoron found the former president guilty of inflating the values of his state real estate properties.
During the penalty phase of the case, Engoron scolded Trump after the former president posted false claims about his law clerk on social media, warning, “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances.”
Trump, who is the first president in history to face federal criminal charges, was also indicted with 19 co-defendants under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law for conspiracy to commit fraud in the 2020 election.
