Federal prosecutors push to reinstate Trump's gag order
For much of this week, after a federal judge temporarily froze the gag order she imposed on him, former President Donald Trump has acted like a mischievous latchkey kid, making the most of his unsupervised stint.
At least three times, he has attacked Jack Smith, the special counsel leading his federal prosecutions, as “deranged.” Twice, he has weighed in about testimony attributed to his former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Each of Trump's comments appeared to violate the gag order put in place to limit his ability to intimidate witnesses in the case, assail prosecutors or otherwise disrupt the proceeding. And after the former president was fined $10,000 Wednesday for flouting a similar directive imposed on him by the judge presiding over a civil trial he is facing in New York, federal prosecutors asked that he face consequences for his remarks about the election interference case as well.
On Friday, the judge who imposed the federal order, Tanya Chutkan, put it on hold for a week to allow the special counsel's office and lawyers for Trump to file more papers about whether she should set it aside for an even longer period as an appeals court considers its merits.
But in the first round of those additional papers, prosecutors said Wednesday that the order should be kept in place as the appeals court considers Trump's request. They also said the lenient way in which Trump was released from custody after his indictment should be reconsidered for a simple reason: He has kept on violating the gag order's provisions.
“The defendant has capitalized on the court's administrative stay to, among other prejudicial conduct, send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case,” wrote Molly Gaston, a prosecutor.
In accusing Trump of breaking the now-paused order, Gaston pointed to a social media message that the former president posted Tuesday night, lashing out at Smith and dissecting statements attributed to Meadows in a news article.
Trump's message also called the various people who have cooperated with the authorities in some of the prosecutions he is facing “cowards” and “weaklings.”
When Chutkan initially imposed the order at a contentious hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, she said it was needed to keep Trump from targeting members of her staff, Smith or members of his staff, or anyone who might appear as a witness in the matter.
With the order in abeyance, those are precisely the people Trump has gone after.
On Monday, before he issued his post about Meadows, Trump called Smith “deranged” again in a different post. Then Wednesday, he repeated the attack on Smith and again brought up Meadows' statements about the election case.