A federal judge Monday imposed a partial gag order on Donald Trump in his criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C., placing limits on the former president’s speech as he campaigns for the Oval Office for the third time.
Trump and other parties in the case are barred from making any public statements targeting special counsel Jack Smith and his staff, as well as court personnel, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said at a court hearing.
Trump is also prohibited from posting or sharing statements about the role and testimony of potential witnesses in the case. Trump stands accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss with the aid of Republican lawmakers.
While Trump will still be allowed to criticize potential witnesses in vague terms, he cannot make statements about their involvement in the case, Chutkan said. She pointed to former Vice President Mike Pence, who is running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, as an example.
Trump vowed to appeal the ruling “very quickly.”
“I’ll be the only politician in our history where I won’t be allowed to criticize people,” he said at a campaign event in Iowa later Monday.
“They put a gag order on me, and I’m not supposed to be talking about things that bad people do,” he said.
Trump’s campaign pounced on the ruling as a prime fundraising opportunity.
“The Biden administration can try and gag me, but they can never gag the American people!” Trump said in email to supporters seeking campaign contributions.
A Trump campaign spokesman separately called Chutkan’s decision “an absolute abomination,” claiming in a statement that President Joe Biden “was granted the right to muzzle his political opponent.”
All of those statements appeared to comply with the terms of the gag order as Chutkan explained it from the bench.
The ruling was the second time this month that Trump had been issued a partial gag order. A judge presiding over his civil trial in Manhattan on charges of business fraud barred the…
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