Amid concerns that the prosecution of former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., is political, a federal appeals court has temporarily lifted the gag order imposed on the former president by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, appointed by then-President Barack Obama.
A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently froze Chutkan’s silencer on Trump after the former president’s legal team accused the judge of being partisan and using her powers unjustly.
BREAKING: DC appeals court grants temporary halt of Trump gag order in J6 conspiracy casehttps://t.co/vHT2f6o6XHhttps://t.co/vHT2f6o6XH
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 3, 2023
Trump’s lawyers have said they are willing to take their case against Chutkan’s gag order to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“No court in American history has imposed a gag order on a criminal defendant who is actively campaigning for public office — let alone the leading candidate for President of the United States,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in a recent filing, as reported by the New York Post.
“That centuries-long practice was broken on October 17, 2023, when the district court entered its Opinion and Order, A1 (the ‘Gag Order’), muzzling President Trump’s core political speech during a historic Presidential campaign,” the attorneys added.
The attorneys’ statement is directed toward the gag order Chutkan imposed on the former president after he spoke ill of Special Counsel Jack Smith, the man responsible for indicting him.
Notably, Smith’s wife worked with former first lady Michelle Obama to produce a documentary. Despite this, the Department of Justice (DOJ) allowed the prosecutor to go after Trump, the leading GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination.
In light of Chutkan’s past statements, where she attacked Trump and the former president’s supporters over the Capitol protests of Jan. 6, 2021, many have accused the judge of being partisan and have argued that she should not oversee the case against the former president.
Interestingly, the case against Trump revolves around the events of Jan. 6, 2021, along with the former president’s so-called attempts to “overturn” the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has attacked Chutkan’s attempts to silence him. The former president speculated that if a Democrat were to speak ill of him, they would not be prosecuted, but that if a Republican were to do the same, they’d be indicted and sentenced behind bars – an analogy that doesn’t seem so far-fetched given today’s weaponized DOJ.
“If you say BAD THINGS about that terrible ‘MONSTER,’ DONALD J. TRUMP, we won’t put you in prison, you can keep your family and your wealth, and, perhaps, if you can make up some really horrible ‘STUFF’ a[b]out him, we may very well erect a statue of you in the middle of our decaying and now very violent Capital, Washington, D.C.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
