In a new ruling from amid the federal criminal case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that accuses former President Donald Trump of attempted election interference, presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan has ripped to pieces the arguments from Trump’s team for a temporary halt to a previous gag order that she issued. Trump wanted that order put on hold while he pursued appeals in another court.
The original order blocked potential public attacks by Trump (and others) on figures like Smith himself, Smith’s staff, and potential witnesses. Trump has at times publicly belittled individuals from each of those categories. As recapped in her new rejection of Trump’s arguments for a hold on the gag order, the ex-president’s team leaned heavily on free speech arguments in trying to convince Chutkan to lift the restrictions on a longer-term basis. Chutkan contended, though, that there simply are other compelling interests also weighing on proceedings.
That list includes the public interest in the administration of justice in a generally orderly, effective manner. “As discussed above, in the Order, and during the motion hearing, the court finds that the public interest in the orderly administration of this case requires the Order’s limitations on such statements,” Chutkan summarized.
She also criticized Trump’s arguments for ignoring the factual record, including in that evidence did come up linking comments from the ex-president to real-world threats of violence and harassment. “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,” Chutkan wrote in her order. Trump lawyer John Lauro evidently at one point called evidence of such a connection between comments and threats “irrelevant” — but you can’t reasonably jump to just pretending that the evidence suggesting this connection doesn’t exist at all!
Chutkan also said Trump’s team misrepresented the record of what she herself had considered. Though Trump claimed no substantial attention was given to the possibility of measures less restrictive than the proposed gag order, that’s just not true. Chutkan recaps how she even rejected some of the government’s proposed parameters for the order. Read her latest conclusions here.
