U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has issued a so-called “limited gag order” restricting what former president Donald Trump can say about his ongoing election interference prosecution in the District of Columbia. In granting the motion of Special Counsel Jack Smith to silence Trump, Chutkan stated from the bench, “This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses. This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice.”
Judge Chutkan claimed that she was balancing Trump’s First Amendment right to free expression with prosecutors’ concerns that his frequent social media attacks might intimidate witnesses or imperil the integrity of the court’s proceedings.
“Mr. Trump can certainly claim he’s being unfairly prosecuted,” Chutkan said magnanimously. “But I cannot imagine any other criminal case in which the defendant is permitted to call the prosecutor ‘deranged’ or a ‘thug,’ and I will not permit it here simply because the defendant is running a political campaign.”
Beyond that Judge Chutkan claimed that she was imposing no additional limits on Trump’s criticisms of the Biden administration or denunciation of the criminal charges as being politically motivated. Nevertheless, in the next breath, she specifically condemned Trump’s online complaints about the Washington jury pool, the Biden administration, and the Justice Department.
In other words, we won’t know exactly what speech Chutkan is forbidding until she files her written order. But, regardless of its terms, there can be no dispute that her gagging of the leading Republican candidate for the presidency is unprecedented and an alarming milestone on this nation’s descent into banana republic status.
Although Chutkan did not state how she would sanction Trump if he violated the terms of her gag order, she could punish such disobedience by imprisoning him for contempt of court.
Trump’s lawyers have announced that they are going to appeal the order as an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech. But, in the meantime, Trump will remain under threat of immediate arrest and imprisonment if he says anything that Judge Chutkan doesn’t like.
That’s the bad news.
But here’s the good news.
As with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith, Chutkan has provided Trump with pure political gold. The only question is how he and his campaign will exploit it.
Will he start wearing a gag in public? Will he announce at campaign rallies that he is no longer permitted to describe Smith as a deranged thug? Will others say publicly what he is forbidden from saying? Will there be social media posts by others stating that which dare not be uttered by Trump?
The myriad ways of getting around Chutkan’s silly order are limitless and — properly orchestrated — will garner political support while making a mockery of her, her regal pretensions, and the forces trying to silence candidate Trump.
In short, by her benighted and ill-conceived gag order, Judge Chutkan has entered the rough and tumble arena of presidential politics.
She is about to get a bruising lesson in how the game is played and the limits of her paltry power to control Trump’s campaign narrative as well as the tidal wave of public outrage that is about to come her way.
George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net.
