A federal appeals court has rejected Trump’s appeal to reconsider the enforcement of Jack Smith’s gag order against him.
Trump’s legal team has been contesting the gag order in Jack Smith’s questionable election interference case since it was implemented last November.
Trump still has the option to elevate the issue to the Supreme Court.
The Messenger reported:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s requests for it to reconsider its decision mostly upholding the partial gag order against the former president in the Washington, D.C. election subversion case.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former president’s petitions in a pair of one-page orders seeking either a rehearing before the same original three-judge panel or an “en banc” review before the entire slate of judges that sit on the court.
Petitions for en banc consideration are often a final step before federal appellants seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court. A Trump spokesman on Tuesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against Trump in the Jack Smith case.
They deemed certain aspects of the gag order as “too broad” and adjusted it to prohibit Trump from criticizing potential witnesses and prosecutors in the case.
Initially, the gag order also restrained Trump from criticizing Jack Smith, but this particular provision was overturned.
From NBC News:
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Friday upheld but narrowed the gag order that had been imposed on former President Donald Trump in his election interference case prohibiting him from making critical comments about potential witnesses and prosecutors.
“We agree with the district court that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s public statements pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” the appeals court ruled. “The district court’s order, however, sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary. For that reason, we affirm the district court’s order in part and vacate it in part.”
The new version of the gag order bars Trump and his lawyers from making “public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding,” but also allows him some leeway if a high-profile witness makes disparaging comments about him.
It also upheld the section of the order prohibiting Trump and his lawyers from making public statements about lawyers in the case, court staff, special counsel staff or their family members. The one exception is special counsel Jack Smith, who Trump continued to deride as a “thug” and “deranged” on social media after the appeals court stayed U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order while it weighed his arguments. The appeals court found her order “should not have restricted speech about the Special Counsel himself.”
