The Justice Department on Tuesday urged a Washington, DC, appeals court to uphold the gag order against Donald Trump in his federal election subversion criminal case, saying the former president’s recent attacks on special counsel Jack Smith’s family underscore why restrictions on Trump’s speech are necessary.
“There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the prosecutor and his family, and … target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility,” Smith’s team told the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing.
Trump is asking the appeals court to undo the limited gag order issued last month by District Judge Tanya Chutkan. The former president has already failed once in his bid to undo the gag order, and the appeals court is set to hear oral arguments on the matter next week.
In a brief last week, Trump’s legal team told the appeals court that Chutkan went too far when she issued the order, which it called “sweepingly overbroad,” and repeated arguments that the order amounts to an unconstitutional check on his speech and limits his ability to campaign.
Smith’s office said in the new filing that the order “was based on well-supported factual findings, narrowly tailored to advance a compelling interest, and more than sufficiently clear to provide the defendant with fair notice of how to conduct himself.”
“In particular, the Order leaves the defendant free to do virtually everything that he has claimed, throughout the litigation, that he must be able to do to run for office while defending himself in court,” prosecutors wrote. “And the distinctions it draws between criticizing the policies of a political rival or describing the prosecution as politically motivated, on the one hand, and targeting trial participants or…
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