The imposition of a gag order on Trump means a judge can decide what the GOP front-runner can and cannot say in a presidential campaign.
A remarkable thing happened on Monday in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a gag order effectively prohibiting Trump, currently the leading GOP candidate for president, from defending himself in public ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The gag order means Trump cannot speak publicly about the trial, potential witnesses, court personnel, or Special Counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who requested the gag order and characterized it as “modest” and “permissible.”
As my colleague Tristan Justice pointed out in these pages yesterday, that means Trump is barred from campaigning against his chief political opponent, which isn’t just President Joe Biden but the entire federal government, especially the Justice Department.
It also means there’s a potentially limitless number of things Trump could say on the campaign trail that would violate the gag order. Julie Kelly, who was in the courtroom Monday, noted on X (formerly Twitter) that there was an entire debate about whether it would be appropriate to allow Trump to use the phrase “Crooked Joe Biden.” A reporter for OANN relayed an exchange between Chutkan and Trump’s defense attorney about whether Trump could call Smith a “thug.” Chutkan, an Obama appointee with a long track record of politically charged Jan. 6 rulings, said she didn’t think such language was “necessary to advance a political campaign,” as if she’s any more competent to decide what sort of campaign rhetoric is necessary than she is to assess the value of Mar-a-Lago.
But set aside the insanity of a federal judge telling a leading presidential candidate — or any political candidate — what they can and cannot say on the campaign trail, as if judges are now the supreme arbiters of American political discourse. The gag order just underscores how insane and farcical this entire trial is.
Recall that Smith didn’t indict Trump on charges that he incited a riot on Jan. 6 or that he committed treason — nothing as concrete as that. He indicted Trump for expressing his opinion that the 2020 election was stolen. You might think it’s crazy that Trump thinks he won in 2020, but millions of Americans believe it — and they are free to say so thanks to the First Amendment. Trump, too, should be free to say it as often and as loudly as he likes. As Jonathan Turley said when Trump was indicted back in August, “If you take a red pen to all of the material presumptively protected by the First Amendment, you can reduce much of the indictment to haiku.”
The actual charges Trump faces are conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against...
Read More HERE
3 comments:
Fracking libturd commies. If he does make pres I sure hope he will be able to eliminate these people from any position of authority, in all the federal gubbermint, and hopefully the states will follow with the same elimination.
I know, I am not good with English punctuation. Thank GOD for spell check, most of the time.
Heltau
I say that the government and courts put their money where their mouth is and jail Trump on whatever the bogus charges of the day are! What’s next? Are they going to ground his airplane and take the keys? Everyone knows if the script was flipped Antifa and BLM would be in total meltdown and burning down anything that is flammable!
The problem is that nothing has worked in truly disarming America! The courts are terrified of Trump supports. The courts motives are so apparent that even Ray Charles could see it!
Everyday the left wing sites all spew the same garbage. Trump is insane, off the rails, he can’t form a coherent sentence, has a meltdown, can’t read or write, sweating profusely while giving bonkers speech, he’s really in trouble now!
Meanwhile Doorman Joe Biden is holding the gates wide open for everyone to use our services and break the American people.
Wake up people, the rule of law is DEAD, when laws are used against political opponents.
You're going to have to kill the communists if you want your democracy back.
Post a Comment