Judge imposes limited gag order on Trump

WASHINGTON – A judge imposed a limited gag order on former President Donald Trump on Monday, restricting Trump from making public statements attacking the witnesses, prosecutors or court staff involved in the federal criminal case in which he stands accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump’s freedom of speech rights do not permit him “to launch a pretrial smear campaign” against those people, Judge Tanya Chutkan said. “No other defendant would be allowed to do so, and I’m not going to allow it in this case.”

But the order left Trump free as he pursues his presidential campaign to continue disparaging the Justice Department and President Joe Biden – and even to assert that he believed his prosecution was politically motivated. Chutkan also apparently left Trump free to attack her.

She also addressed a particularly thorny question involving former Vice President Mike Pence, who is both a witness and his rival for the 2024 Republican nomination. She said Trump could speak about Pence as long as it did not concern Pence’s role in the events at the heart of the case.

The judge did not immediately address how she will enforce her gag order. She merely said she would assess any consequences for Trump if and when he violates it.

Chutkan imposed the gag order at the end of a two-hour hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington in what became one of the most contentious public proceedings so far in any of the criminal cases Trump is facing.

Gag orders limiting what trial participants can say outside court are not uncommon. But Trump’s status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and his decision to portray the gag-order request as part of an effort by the Biden administration to stifle a political rival, made this request by prosecutors especially complex.

In issuing a nuanced, limited order, Chutkan appeared to be trying to thread the needle on balancing Trump’s rights to political speech as a candidate for the country’s highest office and her own duties to protect the integrity of the proceedings in front of her.

Trump and his legal team have sought to portray the election case as being about his First Amendment rights, and they are expected to vigorously challenge the order. There are two ways they could do so – either or both of which could happen.

Trump could appeal it now, arguing it is an unconstitutional prior restraint on his free speech rights in the abstract. In addition, if he later makes remarks that the judge decides crossed the line and she imposes a punishment, he could challenge the decision in that specific episode.

At the hearing, Trump’s legal team and prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith presented two starkly divergent visions of the election interference case. Trump’s lawyers sought to characterize the election interference prosecution as a political vendetta against Trump by Biden, his chief opponent.

Chutkan said she saw the case like any other proceeding she has handled and Trump like any other criminal defendant. “Politics stops at this courtroom,” said the judge, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

Much of the hearing was given over to sparring between Chutkan and John F. Lauro, a lawyer for Trump. Cutting Lauro off several times – and even laughing aloud at him once – Chutkan staked out a position seeking to protect the witnesses and prosecutors in the case from being threatened or harassed, and to keep Trump’s bullying remarks from spiraling into violence.

Trump was placed under a very limited gag order this month by the New York state judge overseeing his civil trial in New York City, where he is accused of inflating the value of his properties. That order restricts Trump from speaking about any people who work on the judge’s staff.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.