Trump demands judge reject federal gag order in January 6 case

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed a blistering lawsuit urging a federal judge to deny prosecutors’ request for a partial gag order aimed at halting “disparaging” attacks on prosecutors and the court. The attorneys, Gregory Singer, John Lauro and Todd Blanche, call the order an attempt to stifle “valid” criticism and silence Trump, President Joe Biden’s political opponent. “In essence, the proposed silence order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in the polls,” they write the lawyers, echoing the candidate’s tendency to quote his own poll.

“Indeed, this motion came on the heels of negative polling for President Biden,” they write, referring to the motion filed by special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors this month. The lawyers have anchored their defense in the First Amendment, just as they have appointed federal prosecutors, including Smith, who enjoys independence as a special prosecutor, as an arm of the Biden campaign. “The prosecutor may not like President Trump’s entirely fair criticism, but neither they nor this court are the filter for what the public hears,” they wrote. They call it a ‘desperate attempt at censorship.’

The filing denounces the “extraordinary step of depriving President Trump of his First Amendment freedoms during the key months of his campaign against President Biden.” “Now that the District Attorney is acutely aware that she is losing the 2024 race, she is seeking, under pain of contempt, to unconstitutionally silence President Trump’s (but not President Biden’s) political speech.” The filing, filed Monday, came within a week of the two candidates planning separate trips to Detroit as a new poll showed Trump taking a narrow lead over Biden in a head-to-head contest.

It came after Smith’s motion cited a series of “disparaging and inflammatory attacks” on prosecutors, potential witnesses and even presiding judge Tanya Chutkan, who is to rule on the motion, as well as a motion by Trump for her to recuse herself from the case. Smith’s team pointed to attacks on prosecutors, potential witnesses and the judge, arguing that this could impact the jury pool in the District of Columbia, where Trump is accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and deprive voters of their to deprive rights. They said the proposed order would be “narrow” and “well defined.”

Trump has called Smith “deranged” and his accusers “thugs,” and has repeatedly attacked former President Mike Pence and former AG Bill Barr, both of whom are potential witnesses. A footnote in the Trump filing says both men have written books about their terms in office and that Pence is running for president. “Neither of them shy away from a robust public debate with President Trump,” they write.

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