Interesting.
- What is a gag order?
- What are the constitutional arguments for and against them?
- How have they been applied in this case?
- Click here for the article.
For four years during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, the American Civil Liberties Union was one of his biggest courtroom adversaries. Now, the group is taking his side in a high-profile fight over what Trump can say as a criminal defendant.
“The obvious and unprecedented public interest in this prosecution, as well as the widespread political speech that it has generated and will continue to generate, only underscores the need to apply the most stringent First Amendment standard to a restraint on Defendant’s speech rights,” ACLU attorneys wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.
The group urged Chutkan to reevaluate her order, calling it both vague and overbroad, with aspects of its meaning “unknown and perhaps unknowable.” One particular uncertainty the ACLU seized on was the meaning of Chutkan’s prohibition on statements that “target” Smith, his prosecutors, court personnel, defense attorneys or witnesses.
“Reading the order, Defendant cannot possibly know what he is permitted to say, and what he is not,” the group wrote.
Trump’s lawyers opposed the gag and have appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Chutkan has temporarily lifted the gag order while she mulls a request to keep it on ice during that appeal.
Trump has also run into trouble in connection with a separate gag order issued by a judge in New York overseeing a civil case involving Trump’s business empire. After Trump used his social media platform to attack the judge’s law clerk, the New York judge ordered Trump not to make comments about court staff. Last week, Trump was fined $5,000 for violating that order, and he racked up another $10,000 fine Wednesday.
