[ April 19, 2024 ]
This is dictatorship. American-style.
“That would really set ablaze the passions & the tempers that already have been inflamed by this case. [..] Imagine putting a gag on Donald Trump when he’s the frontrunner for the Republican party.” President Trump’s attorney.
"I think the idea that they might gag Trump is really a testimony to his effectiveness as a counterpuncher. It's election interference. This is a very clear effort to try to break his momentum." –@RogerJStoneJr tells @TuckerCarlson
— Alex Bruesewitz 🇺🇸 (@alexbruesewitz) April 4, 2023
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Trump Supporters Apoplectic Over Possibility of a Gag Order Silencing the Candidate
Such an order would present novel First Amendment implications given the nature of the target — a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign.
By: Scott Norvell, April 3, 2023:
Lawyers who represent President Trump are reportedly preparing for the possibility that the judge handling his case will impose a gag order on the famously loudmouthed former president that would prevent him from discussing his case publicly on the campaign trail or anywhere else.
Such an order — common in high-profile prosecutions such as the one facing Mr. Trump — could be as broad or as narrow as the presiding judge declares necessary to uphold the integrity of the judicial process and avoid potential jurors being influenced. Under New York law, violating such an order comes with penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and/or 30 days in jail.
To say the least, such an order would present novel First Amendment implications given the nature of the target — a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign. While such orders are more typically put on lawyers litigating cases, gag orders on defendants themselves are not out of the realm of possibility.
When a Trump confidante, Roger Stone, was on trial for intimidating witnesses and lying to Congress during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the federal judge overseeing that case issued a gag order that forbade Mr. Stone from speaking about the case or posting about it on social media. The judge issued the order after Mr. Stone posted a picture of the judge on Instagram with what looked like gunsight crosshairs in the corner.
Gag orders from the government have also been used to silence journalists. During the Trump administration and continuing into the Biden administration, officials with the Department of Justice imposed a gag order on a handful of top New York Times executives that prevented them from publicly disclosing a secret legal battle over access to the emails of several reporters who had received leaks about the FBI’s activities during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Republican commentators on Monday were falling all over themselves in their efforts to decry the possibility of a gag order against Mr. Trump, with some calling any attempt to silence a presidential candidate “election interference” and an “attack on our democracy.” In an appearance on Fox News, a former legal advisor to Mr. Trump who is a Republican Party leader, Harmeet Dhillon, said such an order would be a “gross miscarriage of justice.”
“I would not be surprised to see this politicized prosecutor make that request of this judge,” she said of the potential gag order. “The lawyers in this case will argue against it. It may be the kind of issue that they seek an immediate appeal on if they lose. But at the end of the day, if a court sets those rules then a litigant has to abide by them or be in contempt of court.”
The head of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said it would be “abuse on top of abuse, in my view, of President Trump’s First Amendment rights.”
“When a judge imposes a gag order, he is supposed to weigh these First Amendment interests,” Mr. Fitton added in an appearance on Fox Business Monday. “That a court would bless that abuse by telling a candidate that he can’t talk about the biggest issue right now of the campaign … I can’t believe that would be allowed to happen.”
Judges issuing such orders fall back on the Supreme Court to justify them. In a famous 1966 case, Sheppard v. Maxwell — the case that inspired the television series and later movie “The Fugitive” — the court said trial court judges must take measures to ensure that defendants get a fair trial, measures including gag orders. The 8-1 ruling came after reporters were given virtually unfettered access to cover Shepherd’s sensational murder trial, which was later ruled to be prejudicial to the defendant.
Any such order would most likely come not on Monday, as some reports have suggested, but at the conclusion of his arraignment Tuesday in New York and as a condition of his release on bail. Manhattan’s acting supreme court justice, Juan Merchan, who will preside over the case, would issue the order.
“This is a criminal case now, so the rules have changed, and the rules are no longer in his purview to make,” a former federal prosecutor, Duncan Levin, told Insider. “He is a criminal defendant and, you know, we see hundreds of thousands of criminal defendants across the country every day who have a lot of rights stripped away from them and he is now one of them. These proceedings are going to change his life.”
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22 Comments
1 year ago
Control of the MSM is, and has long been, suppression of speech.That suppression was well camouflaged so we didn’t see it for what it really is.
We’re not on the road to tyranny, we are experiencing tyranny. We’re having a hard time accepting how thoroughly we’ve been conned and screwed, and for how long.
When we’re bloody enough we’ll figure out what to do.
1 year ago
The charges against President Trump keep the public narrative away from the mountain crimes committed by the accusers over the last century.
1 year ago
Where do we look to find an example of a Male Black in a position of executive leadership and independent authority, without any adult supervision, who defers to our Constitution, Law & Order, and our longstanding institutions and political mores to refrain from his instinctual impulse to drive all of the above into the ditch?
That would represent the null set.
1 year ago
It’s pretty clear that we made a huge mistake when we gave blacks all the rights of the real citizens of the United States of America.
D
1 year ago
Reply to
Chris Wolf
Having “all the rights of the real citizens” is not the reason these wicked, racist blacks are so wicked..! There wickedness comes from their pure raw hate not their “rights”..!
1 year ago
Reply to
Chris Wolf
Dude, that’s just racist – Trump has plenty of black supporters.
It’s the Dems that have kept black people in innercity poverty – and convinced them that the Republicans are to blame for that! How else are they going to keep their voter base?
1 year ago
Reply to
Marc
I’m talking about the truth of a multi-racial society, like the United States, which is in inevitable and perpetual conflict and degradation because the races don’t mix.
Sorry you have such a simplistic, reflexive, subordinated, white-guilt submission and unconditional surrender to the whole subject before square-one..
1 year ago
Reply to
Marc
Like the slave trade, which depended upon some Africans’s willingness to sell other Africans as chattel, the Demonrats could not have benefitted from black impoverishment and dependency if not for the pre-existing state of wretchedness and futility of that most reviled of all races. Sad but true.
1 year ago
Reply to
Marc
I don’t “hate” black people.
I just don’t want them in positions of political authority in my country, nor should anyone with any sense, including black people.
D
1 year ago
Innocent until proven guilty!!!!! No rights can be stripped due to a charge.
1 year ago
Reply to
PatD
I guess you don’t live in America where Red Flag laws cause a mere unproven accusation to have your firearms removed from you and you have zero recourse.
1 year ago
That clown brag is having wet dreams about that
D
1 year ago
ELECTION INTERFERENCE to the Nth DEGREE! STOP THIS ILLEGAL INTERFERENCE!!! DISBAR THIS ILLEGAL ACTION BY THIS DISREPUTABLE “SO-CALLED” SOROS SUPPORTED USEFUL IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 year ago
Reply to
Laddyboy
Much worse than a usefuk idiot is one like you who appears to be an idiot who is not useful.
1 year ago
I thought it couldn’t get worse, but I was wrong!
1 year ago
I think the idea that they might gag Trump is really a testimony to his being famously loudmouthed and not being smart enough to know when to shut up.
Judicial Watch is a Trump conspiracy web site.
1 year ago
These arsholes dont know what the law is. Dont worry when they have to come in front of GOD to be judged they will get theirs. Thats a fact jack. Judgement day is on the way.
1 year ago
If Fascism ever came to America it will come disguised as Liberalism.. Ronald Reagan.
It has arrived.
1 year ago
Fat Alvin Bragg is bragging what he can do with the power at his hand and the hate in his heart.
Ask him what Trump did for black Americans, then ask him what his half black half white savior of a President did for black Americans…. I,ll wait…
