Judge reinstates gag order in Trump’s election interference trial

A federal judge reinstated a narrow gag order Sunday preventing former President Trump from making public remarks that target prosecutors, potential witnesses or court staff involved in his election interference case.

“As the court has explained, the First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings must yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice — a principle reflected in Supreme Court precedent,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in the order.

“And contrary to Defendant’s argument, the right to a fair trial is not his alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.”

Chutkan’s decision to bar Trump from making certain public statements comes nine days after she granted an administrative stay in the case to allow for further briefing. Trump and his legal team asked Chutkan to stay her ruling while he appeals the gag order in a higher court.

She concluded Trump is unlikely to prevail in appeals court, writing that “First Amendment rights, whether those of the speaker or the listener, may be curtailed to preclude statements that pose sufficiently grave threats to the integrity of judicial proceedings.”

The dispute between Trump’s legal team and the Justice Department (DOJ) about the legality of the gag order and has gone through several rounds of arguments, many focused on its risks.

In her opinion, Chutkan takes Trump’s team to task for making numerous statements that “disregard” the record of the case.

Chutkan wrote that Trump’s team “never disputed” that his remarks could endanger those he targets, pointing to a transcript from an Oct. 16 hearing where she raised that issue, and Trump attorney John Lauro called the matter “totally irrelevant.”

“The evidence is in the record; Defendant simply fails to acknowledge it,” Chutkan wrote.

She also defended her order against Trump complaints that her guidance was too vague to be constitutional.

Chutkan then parsed two Trump statements — one made just after the gag order was imposed, and another after ABC News reported that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was granted immunity to testify before grand jurors in the case.

In the statement after the gag order was imposed, Trump steered clear of regular taunts and nicknames of special counsel Jack Smith.

But the statement after the temporary lifting of the order casts Meadows’s “potentially unfavorable testimony as a ‘lie’ ‘mad[e] up’ to secure immunity, and it attacks him as a ‘weakling and coward’ if he provides that unfavorable testimony — an attack that could readily be interpreted as an attempt to influence or prevent the witness’s participation in this case,” Chutkan wrote.

“The plain distinctions between this statement and the prior one — apparent to the court and both parties — demonstrate that far from being arbitrary or standardless, the Order’s prohibition on ‘targeting’ statements can be straightforwardly understood and applied,” she added.

Trump’s legal team has previously said it would seek an emergency stay of the order, with the former president both in court and on social media arguing the order violates his First Amendment rights and will hinder his reelection campaign. 

“The Corrupt Biden Administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech. NOT CONSTITUTIONAL! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN…,” Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after Chutkan’s order was reinstated. 

Trump, this past week, was fined $10,000 in a civil trial in New York after the judge determined he violated for a second time a separate gag order issued in his financial fraud case barring him from attacking court personnel.

Updated Oct. 30 at 9:47 a.m. ET