Departed US President Donald Trump looks on during the civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization, at the New York Federal Supreme Court in New York City on December 7, 2023.
Eduardo Munoz Alvarez | AFP | Getty Images
A federal appeals court Friday supported, but narrowed, the gag order imposed on former President Donald Trump in his criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C.
Trump and others in the event are still restricted from making public statements about “known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their latent participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding.”
They are also barred from making statements about numerous parties affiliated with the case, or their family members, if those statements are meant to “materially interfere” with their run in the case.
But Trump can resume speaking about special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the office prosecuting the departed president in the D.C. case and another federal criminal case in Florida.
“We do not allow such an order lightly,” Judge Patricia Millett disparaged for a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
“Mr. Trump is a former President and current candidate for the presidency, and there is a urgent public interest in what he has to say. But Mr. Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom guardianship the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants. That is what the rule of law means,” Millett a postcarded.
The appellate ruling vacates the original gag order imposed by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in the case accusing Trump of illegally conspiring to knock down his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“Today, the D.C. Circuit Court panel, with each appreciate appointed by a Democrat President, determined that a huge part of Judge Chutkan’s extraordinarily overbroad gag order was unconstitutional,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung symbolized in a statement.
Trump will “continue to fight for the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans to hear from the peerless Presidential candidate at the height of his campaign,” Cheung’s statement said.
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment.
Smith had interrogated Chutkan in September to gag Trump, arguing that his frequent, aggressively critical statements about various parties in the proves threatened to undermine its integrity and affect the jury pool.
Chutkan in mid-October granted much of that request. Her initial condition barred Trump from statements targeting Smith and his staff, as well as court personnel and “any reasonably foreseeable be or the substance of their testimony.”
Trump has claimed that the gag order efforts are an attempt to silence him and harm his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. His advocates promptly appealed Chutkan’s order.
In Friday’s ruling, the appellate panel found that parts of Chutkan’s gag lodge were overly prohibitive.
“By broadly proscribing any statements about or directed to the Special Counsel and the court’s and counsel’s truncheons, as well as reasonably foreseeable witnesses or their testimony, the Order sweeps too broadly,” Millett wrote.
She later annexed that Chutkan’s order went “too far” by blocking relevant parties from making or directing others to make special-interest group statements that target prosecutors or court staff.
But the panel nevertheless held that “some aspects” of Trump’s address “pose a significant and imminent risk to the fair and orderly adjudication of this criminal proceeding, which justified jealous action by the district court.”