Former President Donald Trump said he would appeal a judge’s order banning him from attacking special counsel Jack Smith and witnesses in his Jan. 6 trial – but appeared to avoid violating the new rules on Monday.
At a “Caucus for Trump” rally in Adel Iowa hours after the new order, Trump complained about “armed elections and everything they do” while railing against Judge Tanya Chutkan’s new order that he Smith, others Prosecutors etc. are not allowed to attack judges or witnesses in the case.
His words, set against a backdrop of hay bales in Iowa, were the first test of a new order that highlighted Trump’s unique role as an indicted candidate, amid the judge’s admonition that he faces limitations like any other criminal defendant.
“Today a judge issued a gag order. I will be the only politician in history to have a ban on holding office where I am not allowed to criticize people. Can you imagine that? Do you think the?’ Trump told a crowd of supporters. “I’m not allowed to criticize people.” So we’ll see. We will appeal. And we will see. But it’s so unconstitutional,” he said.
“I will be the only politician in history running with a gag order where I am not allowed to criticize people,” former President Donald Trump complained after a federal judge issued a gag order prohibiting him from doing so , attacking special prosecutor Jack Smith court staff
It was part of a multifaceted public reaction to the backlash, as Trump spoke out against the order, tried to raise campaign funds from it and compared himself to gangster Al Capone.
“I’ve been impeached more times than Alphonse Capone,” Trump said, calling the notorious Chicago mobster someone who “if he didn’t like you, looked at you a little askance, then he blew your brains out.”
“He was only impeached once, I was impeached four times,” Trump complained.
But hours after calling Smith “deranged” and the judge “very biased,” his language on Monday was generic as he complained about the “armed” Justice Department.
“They put a gag order on me and I’m not supposed to talk about things that bad people do,” Trump said.
Those comments came after Trump sharply criticized the order on his Truth Social website — where many of his attacks on potential witnesses and court personnel that the judge cited in criticizing the new order took place.
Hey, they gagged me: Trump vowed to appeal the order, saying, “I shouldn’t talk about things that bad people do.” He shied away from calling Jack Smith “deranged,” as he did had done online hours before
“Will be appealing the ruling on the GAG order. “WITCH HUNT!” he wrote in a post. “Something terrible happened to democracy today – gag order!” he wrote in another.
All of Trump’s comments came before the exact wording of the order was finalized.
A statement from an unidentified Trump spokesman also sharply criticized the order, without addressing court staff individually.
“Today’s decision is an absolute abomination and another partisan knife plunged into the heart of our democracy by crooked Joe Biden, who has been given the right to defeat his political opponent, the front-runner for the presidency in 2024 and the most popular political leader in the country “America, President Donald J. Trump,” said a Trump spokesman.
One thing the order did not do was deny Trump the opportunity to profit from the stunt. “Although I am currently limited in what I can say, here is my only message to the public: Make America great again!” Trump said in a fundraising email from his campaign. “The Biden administration can try to choke me, but they can *never* choke the American people!”
Chutkan said Monday in a D.C. federal court that she would issue a “partial” gag order against Trump, whom she admonished for making inflammatory statements that she said could endanger court staff.
The gag prevents him from attacking special prosecutor Jack Smith, who is overseeing his prosecution, as well as witnesses in the case and the judge herself, as well as family members.
Judge Tanya Chutkan described the outlines of her order in court after discussing his public attacks on Bill Barr, General Mark Milley, himself and the “rat-infested” Washington DC where he is being tried.
“I cannot imagine any other criminal case in which a defendant is allowed to call a prosecutor insane or a criminal,” Judge Chutkan said in announcing the order she will impose.
Trump’s position as a candidate in a political campaign “does not give him carte blanche” to “denigrate” or implicitly “encourage” violence against public officials simply doing their jobs, the judge said.
Describing her order after a sometimes heated hearing, Chutkan criticized Trump’s posts in which he called special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against him, a “thug” and “crazy.” As she noted during the hearing, Trump attacked Smith again just last night.
Her order prohibits refuting public statements “that are directed against the special counsel and his staff, including today’s government counsel,” she said.
Her order also bans “any speech publicly directed against any of my staff or other court personnel” – after she addressed Trump’s post going after the chief court clerk in his New York fraud case and her Instagram account.
Trump’s lawyer John Lauro (r.) described a planned impeachment order against the former Trump as unconstitutional and unworkable
“It should go without saying” that the order also applies to family members after Trump mentioned Jack Smith’s wife in a post attacking him.
She called her order “necessary and narrowly tailored.”
Trump can claim he is being “unfairly prosecuted,” Judge Chutkan said, and he is free to tee off in the District of Columbia – the place where the jury in his Jan. 6 case will convene.
But she noted that his comments about D.C., which Trump called “rat-infested” in a post to the court on Monday, would be relevant to his later appeals and his arguments that there could be no fair trial there were factual would be undermined.
She said any problems with Trump’s attacks on D.C., which he called a “dirty and criminal embarrassment to our nation” while railing against his prosecution, could be resolved through “voir dire,” the process in which lawyers ask jurors about possible Check bias.
“This is not about whether I like the language that Mr. Trump is using.” “This is about language that poses a threat to the administration of justice,” she said.
Former President Trump is prohibited from attacking Jack Smith, the judge or witnesses
“The defendant repeatedly referred to Special Counsel Jack Smith as mentally disturbed and his associates as criminals, and he did so again last night,” Judge Chutkan said in court
Trump called special counsel Jack Smith “a leaky, corrupt and deranged prosecutor” just hours before the judge issued a gag order that would ban attacks on him
Not just Trump, but “all parties” are prohibited from making statements “about potential witnesses or the content of their expected testimony,” she said.
This is a topic that could be sensitive. As Trump’s lawyer John Lauro noted in court, Pence is a rival to Trump in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump has repeatedly targeted Pence for failing to count electoral votes from states that certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
Trump could talk about Pence as part of the order, the judge said. But he cannot “make any statements about the events underlying this case” — a comment that appears to include Pence’s role on Jan. 6.
The judge did not provide any details about her decision, which will follow later. This came after a heated hearing in which Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, said the proposed stunt was unconstitutional on its face and argued that it was impossible to delimit or monitor.
Exactly how many people it will rule is not known, but Chutkan noted that the identities of many expected witnesses could emerge from the indictment.
Trump attacked the proposed gag – as did Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan – in a post on his Truth Social platform at 11:30 p.m. Sunday night. The judge obviously saw it and brought it up in court.
“Tomorrow is a great day for democracy.” Jack Smith, a lecherous, corrupt and deranged prosecutor with a terrible track record, asks the Obama-appointed, highly partisan Judge Tanya Chutkan to take action because of the terrible things she has done “The use of a powerful GAG ORDER makes it impossible for me to criticize those who are silencing, namely Crooked Joe Biden and his corrupt and armed Justice Department and FBI,” wrote Trump.
“They want to take away my First Amendment rights and my ability to campaign and defend myself.” In other words, they want to cheat and interfere in the 2024 presidential election. There has never been anything like this in our country. It’s all Banana Republic “stuff.” These political hacks and thugs are destroying our country. Let’s see what happens in Judge Chutkan’s courtroom on Monday. Will America survive or not? I will be campaigning in the Great State of Iowa where I lead by 50 points!!!”
After harassing opposing lawyers for two hours and voicing legitimate concerns about possible security threats through some of Trump’s comments, the judge showed she was ready to act.
“I’m not sure we won’t stay here all the time without some sort of restriction,” she said.
At one point, the judge even presented lawyers with hypothetical posts that Trump might issue to target rivals such as his own former Attorney General Bill Barr.
She asked whether Trump could post under a proposed gag order that “Bill Barr should be executed for his many treasonous acts.”
Chutkan asked about Trump’s posts attacking Smith as “deranged” as well as his posts attacking her and DC – the site where his trial is scheduled to begin in March.
Trump loyalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) appeared in court and criticized the stunt as it was being considered
“The government’s sole objective in this application is to ensure fair administration of justice in this case by preventing out-of-court statements from marring the trial,” he said.
Lauro called the silence order a “prior restriction on content-based political expression, which represents the highest level of constitutional protection.” He defended many of Trump’s comments, even while acknowledging that he may not have made them himself, including attacks on the Department of Injustice.
“He doesn’t have the right to say and do exactly what he wants,” Chutkan said during many clashes with Lauro, pointing out that Trump is a criminal defendant who must abide by the conditions of his release.
“These prosecutors decided to bring this case in the middle of a political campaign,” Lauro said, repeatedly testing the judge’s patience by asking to postpone the trial she had scheduled for March 4.
“The simplest solution to all this is obvious: … to adjourn the case.” [until] after the presidential election. “This is the solution,” he said.
Lauro repeatedly pressed questions about how to enforce an order that would prevent Trump from saying anything that would “denigrate” a potential witness or impact the jury.
“Under the circumstances, it is impossible to enforce an order in the middle of an election campaign,” he said.
Chutkan seemed particularly outraged by Trump’s posts about court staff and officials “doing their jobs.”
Lauro argued that many people who received Trump’s barbs — such as former top Cabinet members with book deals — “signed up for it.”
‘Really. Poll worker?’ she said, referring to low-level officials who prosecuted Trump during his attempt to overturn the election.
“If you start using a word like ‘thug’ to describe a prosecutor doing his job, no other criminal would allow that,” said Chutkan, a former public defender.
“Just because the defendant is running a political election campaign, he is not allowed to do whatever he wants.”
She noted that Lauro, who was put in the position of having to explain Trump’s post about a New York judge’s clerk (Trump called her “Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend”), was himself a former prosecutor.
The challenge of somehow monitoring the statements of a former president seeking re-election is obvious. Prosecutors argued that Trump was premeditated in his attacks and even brought up a recent “Meet the Press” interview in which Trump showed restraint.
“The defendant is not running an election campaign. “He is using the campaign to try the case outside of this courtroom and taint the jury pool,” said prosecutor Molly Gaston.
In her hypotheticals, the judge asked whether Trump could post that Barr “should be executed.” She then asked if Trump could post that he should “stay loyal to me or he can forget about having a job in my next administration.” She asked if Trump could post that Barr “is a smart guy but he should learn to keep his mouth shut”?
She asked whether Trump could say that Barr is “a slimy liar who cannot be trusted.”
“I’m not going to say ‘truth is defense,'” Lauro joked. He said Trump was allowed to comment on Barr’s performance as AG. “I wish Bill Barr was here.” “He’s a tough guy,” he said.
The government countered that even hypothetical statements about Barr being “loyal” could be intimidating, damage his credibility or send an indirect message to other witnesses.
Lauro wanted to know how all this would be implemented in the middle of the election campaign.
“Are we going to be back here for a contempt motion?” he said. But the judge rejected his suggestion of more informal guidance that Trump’s lawyers could share with their client.