The First Amendment isn’t an ‘Unconstitutional Prior Restraint’, and the ACLU is Fighting Prosecuting Attorney General Richard J. Smith

The ACLU team acknowledged a “serious risk” that Trump could inspire his political supporters to violence. The First Amendment doesn’t allow the judge to gag him.

Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche call the gag order in D.C. an “unconstitutional prior restraint” and have launched an appeal, which could help to delay the trial scheduled for March 2024. The judge has issued a temporary pause on the gag order while she awaits additional legal filings.

“Undisputed testimony cited by the government demonstrates that when Defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed,” the judge wrote.

Limiting Trump’s remarks about the work of special counsel Smith and his prosecutors risks undermining a vigorous debate about how public officials are doing their jobs, the ACLU wrote. The lawyers said that the court should not allow public officials to report on the order if it bars speech that threatens or involves violence against such persons.

“In the context of the order, it could mean something as innocuous as ‘name’ or ‘identify,’ or something much more violent,” they wrote. One can either target another with a respectful but vigorous political advocacy or kill them.

The prosecutor told Judge Chutkan that a Texas woman had been arrested for making threats against the judge. Trump also has been fined $5,000 in a civil fraud case in New York for failing to remove a baseless post attacking a judge’s law clerk from his campaign website.

“Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and for the future of our Failing Nation,” Trump tweeted in a New York state courthouse

“Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future of our Failing Nation,” Trump said in the post, a screenshot of which is included in the government’s filing. “Who really knows, but i don’t think that Mark is one of them?”

Smith claims that Trump commented on Meadow’s credibility and anticipated testimony in a New York state courthouse where the former president is facing a civil fraud trial.

“The defendant’s targeting included insinuating that if the reporting were true, the Chief of Staff had lied and had been coerced, and the defendant sent a clear public message to the Chief of Staff, intended to intimidate him,” Smith writes.

Smith also wants the court to clarify that Trump cannot communicate with witnesses about the facts of the case, including through indirect messages made publicly on social media or in speeches.