Last night, DC District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case against Donald Trump for attempting to steal the 2020 election and overthrow the Republic, reinstated her gag order on Trump. She had put it on hold while he appealed, but then Trump threatened Mark Meadows and attacked Special Counsel Jack Smith. In response, Smith’s prosecutors were like “UM, JUDGE?” (It just came out last week that Meadows got immunity from Smith to tell everything he knows. Trump is extremely mad/upset/terrified by this.)
This was apparently urgent enough that Chutkan ruled on it on a Sunday night.
“The First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings must yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice,” Judge Chutkan wrote.
Trump has of course already started screaming on Truth Social:
I have just learned that the very Biased, Trump Hating Judge in D.C., who should have RECUSED herself due to her blatant and open loathing of your favorite President, ME, has reimposed a GAG ORDER which will put me at a disadvantage against my prosecutorial and political opponents. This order, according to many legal scholars, is unthinkable! It illegally and unconstitutionally takes away my First Amendment Right of Free Speech, in the middle of my campaign for President, where I am leading against BOTH Parties in the Polls. Few can believe this is happening, but I will appeal. How can they tell the leading candidate that he, and only he, is seriously restricted from campaigning in a free and open manner? It will not stand!
We guess Trump doesn’t feel he’s “campaigning in a free and open manner” unless he’s attacking and threatening judges and prosecutors and witnesses — and perhaps inciting violence against them — in all the criminal and civil cases against him. That’s revelatory.
That Truth Social imitation tweet is followed by other repetitive Trump babbling like “Why didn’t they start the totally political BIDEN INDICTMENTS & COURT CASES Three (3) Years Ago, instead of the MIDDLE OF MY CAMPAIGN??? Third World Country-ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” As of this morning he’s still babbling and babbling and babbling.
Yes, why didn’t Joe Biden indict Trump in 2020 for trying to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021? Can’t answer that one, can ya!
Another one of them says, “You’re setting a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe. The same can happen to you.” Which sounds to us like a threat. Also a hallucination, since poor brain-addled Trump is so convinced Joe Biden is personally doing all this. (Reminder, as opposed to when Trump was personally ordering his multiple attorneys general to go after Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden himself, Joe Biden has done not that.)
In Chutkan’s order, she goes to pains to emphasize how careful and limited her gag order actually is:
“The defendant has capitalized on the court’s administrative stay to, among other prejudicial conduct, send an unmistakable and threatening message” to Mr. Meadows, prosecutors wrote to Judge Chutkan. “Unless the court lifts the administrative stay, the defendant will not stop his harmful and prejudicial attacks.”
Judge Chutkan cited some of those messages in her order on Sunday, saying they had likely violated her order while others public statements by Mr. Trump had not.
She pointed a post in which the former president criticized the election interference case as “politically motivated” and lashed out at Biden administration for being “corrupt.” Those statements, she said, were perfectly permissible under her order.
But the posts about Mr. Smith and Mr. Meadows were not allowed, she said.
Obviously what is happening here is completely routine, and if anything, Trump has been treated more gently in all jurisdictions than he would if he wasn’t the former president. Based on the way he routinely attacks prosecutors and witnesses, if he was literally anybody else, he would most likely be in pretrial detention right now, AKA jail.
And he might manage to fuck around and find out about that yet. He’s utterly unable to shut his insolent fucking mouth, which means he’s now been fined multiple times for violating the gag order in the civil fraud case in New York. And he will surely violate Chutkan’s order.
Just hours before her ruling came down last night, Trump imitation-tweeted this about Bill Barr, who is also highly likely to be a witness in the election-stealing case:
I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB. He just didn’t want to be Impeached, which the Radical Left Lunatics were preparing to do. I was tough on him in the White House, for good reason, so now this Moron says about me, to get even, “his verbal skills are limited.” Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!
As if the size of Trump’s crowds — even if they were bigger than Obama’s were and they aren’t — would somehow negate the accusation that Trump has limited verbal skills.
Anyway, keep talking, motherfucker. All the judges are watching.
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
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I've said this before, but imagine how pathetic you'd have to be to listen to this guy and think "Yeah, that's my guy! He's on my side! He's a real ruff tuff cream puff!"
"This order, according to many legal scholars, is unthinkable!"
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Big, strong, buff legal scholars, with manly swole biceps and tears in their eyes.