Is defendant Donald Trump allowed to denigrate prosecutors or potential prosecution witnesses at will? A US federal appeals court appeared inclined on Monday to reinstate restrictions on the ex-president’s speech at his federal trial in Washington.
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On March 4, 2024, the federal trial against the current Republican primary candidate for his alleged illegal maneuvers to overturn the results of the 2020 election begins. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over the trial, issued a ban on the parties in October. Public statements “targeted” in this one Case on prosecutors, court staff and witnesses.
He was therefore barred from calling prosecutor Jack Smith “crazy” and his colleagues “thugs” or publicly attacking potential witnesses, but the Republican primary favorite could still go after his Democratic successor Joe Biden and accuse his administration of using justice, to eliminate him from the race for the White House in 2024.
The three federal appeals court judges in Washington called by Mr. Trump expressed skepticism for more than two hours about the arguments of both the defense and the prosecution and suggested that they could reinstate those restrictions, suspended while the merits are decided. but through a significant tightening.
“In this context, it is very difficult to find a balance” between the need to “protect the integrity and investigative function of this criminal process and the need to use a scalpel so as not to politically change the arena,” summarized one of the Judge.
Pressed with questions, Donald Trump’s lawyer John Sauer stuck to his positions and denied almost any validity to even the slightest qualification of his client’s statement. Such restrictions, he half-heartedly conceded, would have to be justified “at least by extraordinarily conclusive evidence.”
“There is almost complete overlap between the issues in the record and those in the political campaign,” he said.
“Threats and intimidation”
However, one of the prosecutors, Cecil VanDevender, pointed to “a very clear pattern and dynamic in which the defendant was subjected to threats and intimidation” by supporters of the ex-president as a result of repeated inflammatory personal attacks on an individual.
The appeals court was nevertheless skeptical about what it saw as a poor distinction between prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice on which they depend.
She also questioned the criteria that determine what statements Mr. Trump is allowed to make about potential witnesses include figures or officials who have publicly criticized him, such as his former chief of staff or his former attorney general.
To illustrate the scope of these restrictions, Judge Chutkan quoted a comment in which the ex-president on his network Truth Social considered the possibility that his last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, would be subject to special counsel against him in return for an offer of immunity Prosecutor Jack Smith, who is investigating this case, would testify.
Behavior worthy of “weak and cowardly” according to Donald Trump. “I don’t think Mark Meadows is one of them, but who knows?” he concluded. Such an attack on a potential witness would certainly fall within the ban, the judge said.
Debates also focused on the precise definition of the word “target,” which the defense described as “vague.”
Even the influential civil rights organization ACLU, which was hardly suspected of having any sympathy for the ex-president it railed against throughout his term in office, condemned a decision that was “based entirely on the meaning of the word ‘target'” and stood them for “ambiguous”.
The date on which the decision will be issued is unknown.