Special prosecutor Jack Smith and his team are fed up with Donald Trump’s insulting and, above all, threatening rhetoric, which endangers the normal development of the trial for his attempted coup after losing the elections. That is why they have demanded a tailored and limited gag in the former president’s public expressions, something that, at first glance, seems as difficult as opening doors to heaven.
The public prosecutors of the Department of Justice asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, supervisor of the case against Trump for the alleged conspiracy to annul the 2020 election result and proclaim himself the winner, to issue a gag order closely tailored to the defendant.
In their petition, in which they accuse them of disinformation (that is, lying) and harassment, the prosecutors cite the almost daily attacks on the people involved in the matter, according to the documentation revealed this Friday by the magistrate, who is also a of the victims of the serious disqualifications made by the former president.
“The defendant repeatedly makes inflammatory statements against the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors, and potential witnesses, and these statements are likely to prejudice potential jurors. “This creates fear among the jurors and the result is a threat to individuals,” the documentation for that request stated.
“As with his previous campaign of public misinformation about the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are an attempt to undermine public confidence in an institution, the judicial system, and intimidate the court, potential jurors, witnesses and prosecutors,” they indicated in that presentation.
The request was made under secrecy earlier this month. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, opposed this limitation on his verbiage, relying on the first amendment of the Constitution, which deals with freedom of expression.
The prosecutors were not seeking to have the former president refer to public documentation about the case or prevent him from proclaiming his innocence. They wanted to limit certain statements about witnesses, as well as “derogatory, inflammatory or intimidating comments” from anyone involved in the case, including potential jurors.
The judge imposed a standard protection order on the sensitive material in this case, but none on the public statements. Experts consider that the judge faces a difficult situation if she wants to establish protections since Trump is in full campaign to be the Republican candidate in the 2024 elections. One of his rivals in the primaries, former Vice President Mike Pence, is also one Of the prosecution’s key prosecution witnesses and counsel, they maintained that they only saw a benefit to Trump if he defied the limits of a court-imposed order.
The 19 pages of prosecutors’ petition include numerous inappropriate comments that Trump spread on his social network. These examples include the repeated labeling of special prosecutor Smith as “deranged” or his collaborators as “thugs.” He says of the judge that she is “a fraud”, Pence is “delusional”, Washington is a “filthy city riddled with crime”, while he remembers the phrase “if they come after me, I will go after them”, more than evident proof of his thuggery. It also becomes clear that Trump, having been previously informed of the investigation steps, spreads alleged conspiracies that never existed.
The letter compares Trump’s attitude to his attempt to maintain control of the White House after the defeat in the 2020 elections. “At the service of his criminal conspiracies, through false public statements, the accused seeks to erode faith in the administration of the elections and intimidate people who reject their lies,” he reiterated. “He is trying to do the same in the criminal case against him, undermine the judicial system,” that report noted.
In fact, in politics or business, Trump has always followed the pattern of coming out insulting and threatening others.
