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Donald Trump (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, POOL), Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan (court photo)
After Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 trial judge granted a temporary stay of a gag order and heard from both his defense lawyers and special counsel Jack Smith’s team on the issue, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Sunday reimposed the gag, noting that the former president “simply fails to acknowledge” evidence of a causal link between his Truth Social attacks on witnesses and resulting threats and harassment.
Judge Chutkan began her brief opinion and order by pointing out that Trump attorney John Lauro, when questioned by the court, dismissed concerns about harassment and threats as “totally irrelevant.”
In the judge’s view, however, the Truth Social posts that directly go after potential witnesses, such as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, are highly relevant because they threaten the integrity of the proceedings by intimidation.
“Defendant’s repeated appeals to broad First Amendment values therefore ignore that the court — pursuant to its obligation to protect the integrity of these proceedings — recognized those values but, in balancing them against the potential prejudice resulting from certain kinds of statements, found them outweighed,” the judge wrote, before recounting her back-and-forth with Lauro.
Notably, the judge said the Trump attorney’s dismissal of the relevance did not actually dispute the evidence of a link between Truth Social posts and a rise in threats [emphasis ours in bold]:
To begin, he asserts that the court “cite[d] no evidence supporting its findings of risks of harassment and witness intimidation, and the prosecution provided none.” Id. at 8. But several times the court and the government pointed to evidence causally linking certain kinds of statements with those risks, and Defendant never disputed it. See Hr’g Tr. at 67 (The Court: “[W]hen Mr. Trump has singled out certain people in public statements in the past, hasn’t that led to them being threatened and harassed, as demonstrated in the statements attached by the government?” Mr. Lauro: “Your Honor, that’s totally irrelevant.” The Court: “And the government’s motion cites several of them who averred in the kinds of statements that you’ve asked for under oath that threats and harassment toward them had increased significantly as a result of Mr. Trump’s statements about them.”); Order at 2 (“Undisputed testimony cited by the government demonstrates that when Defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed. See ECF No. 57 at 3–5.”); see also ECF No. 60 (failing to dispute or even discuss the testimonies cited by the government). The evidence is in the record; Defendant simply fails to acknowledge it.
Chutkan also rejected Trump’s assertion that her gag order was unconstitutionally vague as to what kind of speech was allowed and disallowed.
The judge provided an example of a post that did not run afoul of the gag order, a post where Trump generally called the Biden administration corrupt and did not target any particular person.
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Trump’s Biden admin Truth Social post
Chutkan then pointed to Trump’s Oct. 24 post about Mark Meadows, which the former president posted after the gag order was administratively and temporarily stayed pending appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The judge said that Trump’s lawyers acknowledged the post would have almost certainly violated the gag order if it was in effect at the time it was posted online. Chutkan also suggested that the Meadows post could be seen as attempted witness tampering [see: 18 U.S. Code § 1512(b) and (d)].
“The statement singles out a foreseeable witness for purposes of characterizing his potentially unfavorable testimony as a ‘lie’ ‘mad[e] up’ to secure immunity, and it attacks him as a ‘weakling[] and coward[]’ if he provides that unfavorable testimony — an attack that could readily be interpreted as an attempt to influence or prevent the witness’s participation in this case,” the judge wrote. “The plain distinctions between this statement and the prior one — apparent to the court and both parties — demonstrate that far from being arbitrary or standardless, the Order’s prohibition on ‘targeting’ statements can be straightforwardly understood and applied.”
As a result, the temporary stay of the gag was lifted.
Trump’s attorneys asserted that special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested the reinstatement of the gag order solely to “silence its primary political opponent.”
“The Court should not countenance such a blatant and unjustifiable attack on the First Amendment,” the lawyers argued.
Read the arguments Trump’s lawyers made here.
