Judge Tanya Chutkan‘s temporary freezing of a limited gag order she’d placed on former President Donald Trump has brought a response from the prosecution, which reasserts the dangers Trump presently poses to the legal proceedings by fomenting “harassment, intimidation or violence.”
Trump’s incendiary public rhetoric serves essentially as marching orders for his followers, the prosecution asserts in the federal election interference case presided over by Chutkan.
“Everyone — the defendant, his ‘over 100 million followers’, and the people targeted,” the prosecution writes, ” — knows of the dynamic, which creates a ‘significant and immediate risk’ that witnesses will be intimidated or otherwise unduly influenced by the prospect of being themselves targeted for harassment or threats.”
Attorneys, public servants and others also face the same intimidation as witnesses when Trump gives marching orders to his followers.
NEW: Prosecutors' plea to Judge Chutkan to reimpose her gag order on Trump is a remarkable portrayal of a former president as an active danger — not just to the trial but to the physical safety of witnesses.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 26, 2023
And they say he knows it but doesn't care.https://t.co/NUgcgNXB4e pic.twitter.com/JQAyByooHE
“The defendant knows the effect of his targeting,” says the call for reinstating the gag order. He seeks to “use it to his strategic advantage while simultaneously disclaiming any responsibility for the very acts he causes.”
The prosecution uses as an example an alleged threat to then Vice President Mike Pence. All Trump did — ensuring deniability — was to inform Pence that he would have to “publicly criticize him.” In anticipation of Trump’s criticism, Pence’s team redoubled his security detail, on the understanding that Trump’s criticism would be interpreted by his followers as an instruction to threaten or worse. “Hang Mike Pence,” was heard chanted during the Jan 6 riots.
