Former United States President Donald Trump filed an appeal of the gag order issued by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in relation to the Republican businessman's 2020 election subversion case.
It took the judge three rounds of written filings over the last six weeks and more than two hours of courtroom arguments in the last week to sort through issues around the gag order she imposed on the former president.
Trump Appeals Gag Order
On Tuesday, the judge released the formal written order where she detailed in three brief pages Trump being barred from making public comments that target the members of her court staff, the special counsel Jack Smith, and any of his staff. In addition, the order prohibits the former president from making comments targeting "any reasonably foreseeable witnesses" in the case.
Despite her order, Judge Chutkan will still have to determine on a case-by-case basis which, if any, of Trump's statements violated her gag order ruling. Furthermore, as per the New York Times, she will have to decide how to punish the former president if he does go against the order.
In response to the ruling, Trump's legal team quickly gave notice on Tuesday that the former president would appeal the order. Trump had already criticized the decision as an assault on his First Amendment Rights a few hours after Chutkan announced the order on Monday.
The former president claimed that the judge did not like him too much and said that she spent her entire life not liking him. He later misrepresented the contents of Chutkan's ruling, saying that the gag order prohibited him from speaking badly about his opponent.
However, the judge's gag order leaves Trump free to criticize United States President Joe Biden, the Democrat's administration and the Department of Justice. It also allows him to attack "the campaign platforms or policies" of Republican presidential nomination rival Mike Pence.
Election Subversion Case
A few moments before Trump entered a New York courtroom to attend his ongoing civil fraud trial, Trump said that Chutkan's gag order took away his right to speak. According to CNN, he claimed that he was being railroaded, similar to what was being done in other trials that he is a part of.
He said that the legal efforts against him were being done as he is leading Biden and he is now being restricted. In announcing the order, Chutkan said it was not about whether or not she liked the language the former president used. She argued that it was because of language that presented a danger to the administration of justice.
Chutkan said that the defendant made statements targeting court staff to national audiences using language that posed a significant and immediate risk. These include remarks where Trump claimed that individuals involved in the previous election were liars, thugs, or deserved death.
Trump's legal team argued in a brief filed last month that the gag order prosecutors sought was politically motivated. They called it "nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent," said NBC News.
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