OAN’s Daniel Baldwin
9:07 AM – Tuesday, October 31, 2023
A Washington, D.C. federal judge reinstated a gag order on former President Donald Trump Sunday evening, a move that left legal experts scratching their heads.
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“The notion that President Trump is going to be subject to this level of scrutiny and this level of criminal enforcement against him at the same time he’s trying to run a presidential campaign, it’s mind boggling,” Chris Farrell, director of investigations at Judicial Watch, told One America News. “It’s not only unlawful, it’s illogical.”
Tanya Chutkan had temporarily suspended the gag order she imposed after a request from the Trump legal team. But she ended the stay after she claimed that “the right to a fair trial is not [Trump’s] alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.”
Farrell emphasized that, despite his monetary prowess, Trump is at a disadvantage as the government has “unlimited” resources.
“When the government decides to criminally prosecute somebody, and that’s what they’re doing now. The case is, it’s even written, ‘United States of America vs. Donald Trump,’” Farrell said. “And that’s not just a formal heading that literally is the weight and power brought against an individual person. So the entire United States of America, the Justice Department, unlimited resources, unlimited lawyers, unlimited money, unlimited investigators, unlimited ability to control and frame up the legal process is being brought against one person.”
Farrell says Chutkan’s reasoning regarding the government’s right to a fair trial is blind to the United States Constitution.
“The opening line of the Constitution is, ‘we the people,’ it’s not ‘us the government,’ right,” said Farrell. “The government doesn’t have some superior right over the individual citizens when it comes to a case like this. So she is completely perverting and twisting the idea that the right to a fair trial is the government’s. The government holds all the cards. They bring the prosecution. The fair trial guarantee is for the individual person.”
Chutkan asserted that a Truth Social post made by Trump after she temporarily suspended his gag order would have violated it. Trump, responding to a news report alleging that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows took a deal from Smith, wrote that “weaklings and cowards” would take such a deal. Chutkan argued this “would almost certainly violate the Order under any reasonable definition of targeting.”
Farrell argues that banning Trump from making statements like this is out of line.
“What sort of magical secret powers does Judge Chutkan imagine Mr. Trump having,” Farrell asked. “Because he spouts off? Because he is frustrated and angry about what he thinks is unfair, or some weird media twist to something that is either true or untrue? And he disagrees with it?”
Farrell claims the gag order will simply allow Smith and his team to silence Trump, leak damaging stories about him, and dominate the narrative.
“Smith and his staff are like a sieve,” Farrell explained. “They pour out information to these people. They’re not journalists. They call themselves journalists. They’re really stenographers, right? They simply take down dictation of what they’re told, and they print it. It’s state run media, right? Whether it’s Washington Post, New York Times, or any of the other cable news outlets. It’s like the old days of the Soviet Union.”
“Remember Judge Chutkan is a government attorney who wears a black robe, right,” Farrell continued. “There’s nothing magical or special. We would love to believe that our judiciary is above all the political nonsense in the country. They’re not, in large part. They’re political hacks who made campaign donations and in, and in return for that, they get an appointment to the bench. She draws her paycheck from the United States Treasury, just like Jack Smith does. The only deal, the only thing that’s different is she wears a black robe. And that’s the very unpleasant but very accurate truth.”
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