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U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan partially granted special counsel Jack Smith’s motion for a gag order on Donald Trump in the federal election interference case, NBC News reported Monday.
After prosecutors raised Trump's threatening remarks, the former president and current leading 2024 GOP presidential candidate will be prohibited from making statements about potential witnesses and their testimony. Trump will also be prohibited from attacking prosecutors from Smith’s office, their families or any courthouse staff.
While Trump’s legal team argued it’s unfair to restrict a presidential candidate in this way, Smith’s team said Trump wanted “special treatment” to “publicly intimidate witnesses and malign the Court, citizens of this District, and prosecutors.”
NBC News reported that Chutkan declined to limit Trump’s statements about Washington, D.C., and its residents, or his statements criticizing the government or the Justice Department generally.
Chutkan is expected to issue a written order following Monday's hearing in which she signaled her ruling. After declining Trump's invitation for her to recuse last month, Chutkan is set to preside over his Washington trial starting in March, the first scheduled trial of his four criminal cases.
“I cannot imagine any other criminal case” in which a criminal defendant could call prosecutors deranged or a thug, Chutkan said at the hearing. “No other defendant would be allowed to do so and I’m not going to allow it in this case,” she said.
The judge in Trump's ongoing civil fraud trial in New York placed a limited gag order on him there as well, after the Republican targeted the judge's law clerk on social media.
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