Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a limited gag order on Donald Trump during a hearing for the federal-election-subversion case against him on Monday. Under the order, the former president will be barred from attacking Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff, potential witnesses in the case, as well as court employees.
“His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify public servants who are simply doing their jobs,” Chutkan said.
Trump will be allowed broadly to make comments about the city of Washington, D.C., and its residents plus the Justice Department and the Biden administration, likely in response to criticism from the former president’s legal team that a gag order would threaten Trump’s First Amendment rights. Any potential violation of the order would result in sanctions from Chutkan, though the judge did not go into specifics on what punishments she might consider.
A spokesman for Trump issued a statement following the ruling, calling the order “an absolute abomination and another partisan knife stuck in the heart of our Democracy by Crooked Joe Biden.”
In September, Smith and his team requested a limited gag order on the president, writing in a court filing that the former president had released or shared statements “attacking the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses” and that through his actions, Trump “threatens to undermine the integrity of these proceedings and prejudice the jury pool.”
Prosecutors directly referenced some of Trump’s past statements in the filing, including attacks on potential witnesses like former vice-president Mike Pence and on Smith and Chutkan herself as well as a Truth Social post from the day after his arraignment in the case that read “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU.” Trump’s legal team denounced the request, writing, “The prosecution now asks the court to take the extraordinary step of stripping President Trump of his First Amendment freedoms during the most important months of his campaign against President Biden.”
Smith’s team later submitted an additional filing, citing more recent comments made by Trump including a social-media post aimed at former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley that accused him of “treasonous” behavior and suggested that he deserved execution because of it.
In today’s hearing, prosecutors also raised the death threat made against Chutkan by a Trump follower in Texas who was arrested in August after leaving a racist voice-mail threatening the judge’s life. The New York Times notes that Chutkan didn’t say specifically that she was barring the former president from making comments about her.
This is not the first time that a judge has placed limits on Trump’s rhetoric about his pending legal cases. Earlier this month, Judge Arthur Engoron also instituted a limited gag order on Trump following a social-media post he made targeting a law clerk on the judge’s staff.
