Federal gag order urged for Trump
Counsel advises stricter sanctions
Special counsel Jack Smith argued in new court filings late Wednesday that recent comments by Donald Trump show not only that a federal gag order should be reimposed, but that the court should weigh stricter sanctions, including sending him to jail, if he keeps talking about witnesses in his case.
The night filing was one of four made by the special counsel’s office on a range of legal issues in preparation for Trump’s planned March trial in D.C. on charges he conspired in late 2020 and early 2021 to obstruct Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
In recent weeks, Trump’s public statements attacking prosecutors, court personnel, and others have raised alarms among judges who worry that such verbal broadsides might inspire someone to commit violence against the subjects of Trump’s wrath.
Trump has been indicted four times this year: in D.C. on federal charges of conspiring to obstruct the election results; in Florida on federal charges of mishandling classified papers and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the documents; in Georgia on state charges of plotting to thwart the election results there; and in New York on business fraud charges related to hush money payments in 2016. Trump has denied the charges and accused law enforcement officials of pursuing him in the courts to keep him out of the 2024 presidential race, where he has a commanding lead over all his Republican rivals.
US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump in D.C., issued a limited gag order against the former president last week, but she temporarily suspended the order while she considered further argument on the matter.
In a lengthy filing, Smith’s office argued she should reinstate the gag order, particularly in light of a social media post this week in which Trump talked about his former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Without the court’s order, prosecutors wrote, there is an “immediate risk” that witnesses’ testimony “could be influenced or deterred by the defendant’s documented pattern of targeting.”
Notably, the filing urged Chutkan to “modify the defendant’s conditions of release by making compliance with the Order a condition or by clarifying that the existing condition barring communication with witnesses about the facts of the case includes indirect messages to witnesses made publicly on social media or in speeches.”
Such a modification, the prosecutors argue, would give Chutkan “compliance measures available under 18 U.S.C. § 3148 in addition to those available as a contempt penalty for violating the Order.” The compliance measures listed in that part of the law are “a revocation of release, an order of detention, and a prosecution for contempt of court.”
“Otherwise, without the Court’s intervention, the defendant will continue to threaten the integrity of these proceedings and put trial participants at risk,” the 32-page filing argues.
The argument over Trump’s statements escalated when Trump reacted to a report that said Meadows had provided testimony against Trump in exchange for immunity.
The new legal argument over the federal gag order came just hours after a New York state court judge overseeing a civil fraud trial against Trump found him in contempt of that court’s gag order and fined Trump $10,000.