Special counsel asks for 'narrow' gag order for
Trump in election interference case
The Order itself does not gag Trump that I see.
“The defendant has an established practice of issuing inflammatory public statements targeted at individuals or institutions that present an obstacle or challenge to him,” the special counsel's office wrote.
The government said Trump "made clear his intent to issue public attacks related to this case when, the day after his arraignment, he posted a threatening message on Truth Social."
Trump's Aug. 4 post read: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"
Trump, the office wrote, "has made good on his threat," spreading "disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.
"Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution—the judicial system—and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals—the Court, the jury pool, witnesses, and prosecutors," the prosecutors wrote.
Trump responded to the filing in a post on Truth Social, repeating his previous accusations that President Joe Biden has "weaponized" the Justice Department.
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Chutkan — who herself has herself received threats and had an increased security presence after being assigned the case — has set Trump’s trial for March 2024.
“As set forth in the indictment, after election day in 2020, the defendant launched a disinformation campaign in which he publicly and widely broadcast knowingly false claims that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the presidential election, and that he had actually won,” federal prosecutors wrote in the motion released Friday. “In service of his criminal conspiracies, through false public statements, the defendant sought to erode public faith in the administration of the election and intimidate individuals who refuted his lies."
"The defendant is now attempting to do the same thing in this criminal case," they continued, "to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.”
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Almost from the moment he entered public life, Mr. Trump has reflexively attacked his enemies in vivid and often vicious fashion, making use of social media in particular. But now that he is a defendant, facing four indictments in four different cities, his habit of threatening and bullying those in his way has bumped up against the traditional strictures of the criminal justice system.
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The issue of Mr. Trump’s threatening statements began almost immediately after he was indicted last month on three overlapping conspiracies to defraud the United States, to disrupt the certification of his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and to deprive people of the right to have their votes counted.
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Judge Chutkan sent a shot across Mr. Trump’s bow, telling his lawyers that she would not tolerate any remarks from the former president that might “intimidate witnesses or prejudice potential jurors.”
But within days, Mr. Trump tested that warning by posting a string of messages on Truth Social that largely amplified others criticizing Judge Chutkan.
In their filing on Friday, prosecutors went through a long litany of Mr. Trump’s social media attacks, noting how he has referred to Mr. Smith several times as “deranged” and to the prosecutors working under him as a “team of thugs.” They pointed out that Mr. Trump has called Judge Chutkan “a radical Obama hack” and a “biased, Trump-hating judge.”
Prosecutors also said that Mr. Trump has attacked the residents of Washington who one day will be called upon to serve as the jury pool for his trial. In one post, Mr. Trump claimed that he would never get a fair hearing from those who lived in the “filthy and crime ridden” district, which he said “is over 95% anti-Trump.”
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Seeking to connect Mr. Trump’s out-of-court statements directly to the charges they have brought, prosecutors cited several social media attacks that reached back to the chaotic postelection period when Mr. Trump was spreading lies that widespread fraud had marred the vote count. The prosecutors accused Mr. Trump of knowing that his menacing remarks at that time often inspired “others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets.”
As an example, they cited Chris Krebs, the former head of the government’s cybersecurity agency, whom Mr. Trump had fired and then attacked on Twitter after Mr. Krebs vouched for the integrity of the 2020 election.
Not long after those attacks, prosecutors noted, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers went on the conservative TV outlet Newsmax and declared that Mr. Krebs “should be drawn and quartered,” and “taken out at dawn and shot.”
The government’s filing also mentioned Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers, whom Mr. Trump and his allies falsely accused of having mishandled ballots while counting votes in Atlanta during the 2020 election.
After Mr. Trump “spread false accusations” against Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss — who are mother and daughter — they were “inundated” by “pernicious threats and intimidation,” prosecutors said.
