Trump Supporters Apoplectic Over Possibility of a Gag Order Silencing the Candidate

Lawyers who represent President Trump are reportedly preparing for the possibility that the judge handling his case will impose a gag order on the famously loudmouthed former president that would prevent him from discussing his case publicly on the campaign trail or anywhere else.Such an order — common in high-profile prosecutions such as the one facing Mr. Trump — could be as broad or as narrow as the presiding judge declares necessary to uphold the integrity of the judicial process and avoid potential jurors being influenced. Under New York law, violating such an order comes with penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and/or 30 days in jail.To say the least, such an order would present novel First Amendment implications given the nature of the target — a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign. While such orders are more typically put on lawyers litigating cases, gag orders on defendants themselves are not out of the realm of possibility.When a Trump confidante, Roger Stone, was on trial for intimidating witnesses and lying to Congress during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the federal judge overseeing that case issued a gag order that forbade Mr. Stone from speaking about the case or posting about it on social media. The judge issued the order after Mr. Stone posted a picture of the judge on Instagram with what looked like gunsight crosshairs in the corner.Gag orders from the government have also been used to silence journalists. During the Trump administration and continuing into the Biden administration, officials with the Department of Justice imposed a gag order on a handful of top New York Times executives that prevented them from publicly disclosing a secret legal battle over access to the emails of several reporters who had received leaks about the FBI’s activities during the 2016 presidential campaign.Republican commentators on Monday were falling all over themselves in their efforts to decry the possibility of a gag order against Mr. Trump, with some calling any attempt to silence a presidential candidate “election interference” and an “attack on our democracy.” In an appearance on Fox News, a former legal advisor to Mr. Trump who is a Republican Party leader, Harmeet Dhillon, said such an order would be a “gross miscarriage of justice.” “I would not be surprised to see this politicized prosecutor make that request of this judge,” she said of the potential gag order. “The lawyers in this case will argue against it. It may be the kind of issue that they seek an immediate appeal on if they lose. But at the end of the day, if a court sets those rules then a litigant has to abide by them or be in contempt of court.”The head of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said it would be “abuse on top of abuse, in my view, of President Trump’s First Amendment rights.”“When a judge imposes a gag order, he is supposed to weigh these First Amendment interests,” Mr. Fitton added in an appearance on Fox Business Monday. “That a court would bless that abuse by telling a candidate that he can’t talk about the biggest issue right now of the campaign … I can’t believe that would be allowed to happen.”Judges issuing such orders fall back on the Supreme Court to justify them. In a famous 1966 case, Sheppard v. Maxwell — the case that inspired the television series and later movie “The Fugitive” — the court said trial court judges must take measures to ensure that defendants get a fair trial, measures including gag orders. The 8-1 ruling came after reporters were given virtually unfettered access to cover Shepherd’s sensational murder trial, which was later ruled to be prejudicial to the defendant.Any such order would most likely come not on Monday, as some reports have suggested, but at the conclusion of his arraignment Tuesday in New York and as a condition of his release on bail. Manhattan’s acting supreme court justice, Juan Merchan, who will preside over the case, would issue the order.“This is a criminal case now, so the rules have changed, and the rules are no longer in his purview to make,” a former federal prosecutor, Duncan Levin, told Insider. “He is a criminal defendant and, you know, we see hundreds of thousands of criminal defendants across the country every day who have a lot of rights stripped away from them and he is now one of them. These proceedings are going to change his life.”In an appearance Monday on the “Benny Johnson Show,” a Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, said her team would be “fighting First Amendment issues left, right, and center” if any such gag order is issued Tuesday.

Trump Supporters Apoplectic Over Possibility of a Gag Order Silencing the Candidate

Trump Supporters Apoplectic Over Possibility of a Gag Order Silencing the Candidate

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