Court filing cites Trump at gun store
Federal prosecutors said in a Friday night filing that former President Donald Trump may have broken the law if he bought a handgun at a recent campaign stop in South Carolina.
“The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so,” the court filing argues. “It would be a separate federal crime, and thus a violation of the defendant’s conditions of release, for him to purchase a gun while this felony indictment is pending.”
The prosecutors were referring to social media posts by the Trump campaign earlier this week, when a staffer posted a video of Trump at the Palmetto State Armory, a gun store in Summerville, S.C.
The video “showed the defendant holding a Glock pistol with the defendant’s likeness etched into it. The defendant stated, ‘I’ve got to buy one,’ and posed for pictures,” the prosecutors’ filing states, noting that the staff member posted the video with a caption that said: “President Trump purchases a GLOCKInc in South Carolina!”
The campaign staffer later deleted the post and retracted the claim, saying Trump did not purchase or take possession of the gun. The latter claim, prosecutors note in their filing, is “directly contradicted by the video showing the defendant possessing the pistol.”
Only further confusing the issue, Trump reposted a video of the interaction made by someone else, which had the caption: “MY PRESIDENT Trump just bought a Golden Glock before his rally in South Carolina after being arrested 4 TIMES in a year.”
The prosecutors raised the South Carolina incident in arguing that the judge in Washington, D.C., overseeing Trump’s pending federal charges of obstructing the 2020 election results should impose a gag order on the former president because of public statements he has made attacking prosecutors, the judge and potential witnesses. Those statements, prosecutors argue, could intimidate jurors or bias the pool of prospective jurors.
The judge overseeing the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, has scheduled an Oct. 16 hearing for lawyers to debate the request for a limited gag order to stop Trump from spreading prejudicial pretrial publicity.
Prosecutors argued in court filings that just as Trump knowingly lied that the 2020 election had been stolen in the hopes of undoing those results, the former president now is attempting to undermine confidence in the judicial system by pumping out near-daily “disparaging and inflammatory attacks” about potential jurors, witnesses, prosecutors and the judge.
Trump’s attorneys have responded that a gag order against a leading candidate for president would be a violation of his rights, accusing prosecutors of trying to strip the former president “of his First Amendment freedoms during the most important months of his campaign against President Biden.”
They said Trump has never called for any improper or unlawful action, nor intimidated or incited anyone to cause actual harm, based on the courts’ legal definition of inciting imminent lawless action and the number of the government’s witnesses.