The judge should throw out the federal election interference case

The Exact Response to “Trump’s Inciting of Violence” by Smith and his Attorneys in the House of Representatives of the House Intelligence Committee

The American Civil Liberties Union wrote that limiting Trump’s comments about Smith and his prosecutors risks scuttling a vigorous debate about how public officials are doing their jobs. The lawyers asked the court to exempt public officials from covering the order, except to the extent that it bars speech that threatens or facilitates violence against other people.

Trump’s legal team said the former president, like millions of other Americans, had every right to cast aspersions on the integrity of the 2020 election — even as senior members of his own administration repeatedly assured Trump that no widespread fraud had influenced the outcome of the race.

“If there is a constant in our democracy, the marketplace of ideas is the most important element in determining the scope of public debate,” wrote the defense attorneys.

The lawyers asked for the charges to be thrown out because of the way the U.S. Senate acquitted Trump in an impeachment proceeding weeks after the Capitol building siege.

Trump stands accused of defrauding the government he once led and violating the rights of millions of Americans whose votes he allegedly tried to cast aside in favor of bogus “alternative” slates of electors. He’s pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“To assert that President Trump, as one voice among countless millions, was somehow capable of unilaterally ‘tricking’ or ‘deceiving’ these individuals, who include some of the most informed politicians on the planet, simply by advocating his opinions on this contentious issue, is beyond absurd,” they wrote.

The Justice Department already has charged more than 1,000 people with breaking the law at the Capitol more than two years ago, many of whom have pleaded guilty and told judges they traveled to Washington after Trump urged them to “be there, will be wild.”

The former president’s inciting of violence was not brought to his attention. His lawyers are asking the judge to strike references to that day from the indictment as “inflammatory” to a D.C.-based jury.

Comments on Donald Trump’s alleged “inappropriate” attacks in the U.S. and the case against him in Washington, D.C.

Trump is favored to return to the White House in a few years. He’s campaigning even as he fights criminal cases in four different jurisdictions: Florida; Fulton County, Ga.; New York; and Washington, D.C.

Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche call the gag order in D.C. an “unconstitutional prior restraint” and have launched an appeal, which could help to delay the trial scheduled for March 2024. While the judge waits for additional legal filings, she has temporarily stopped the gag order.

Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith will have an opportunity to respond to these and other allegations by Trump in court filings later this week.

But in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday, the ACLU said voters have a right to hear what Trump has to say, especially as he runs to return to the White House in 2024. The judge’s order isn’t essential to the administration of justice, according to the civil liberties group.

A judge in the U.S. ordered a gag order on Donald Trump, prohibiting him from making inflammatory comments about the case against him in Washington D.C.

The judge wrote that the testimony cited by the government showed that when the defendants have publicly attacked individuals, those individuals are subsequently threatened and harassed.

ACLU attorneys Brett Max Kaufman, Ben Wizner and Brian Hauss wrote that restrictions that seek to stop Trump from “targeting” prosecutors and witnesses are vague because it’s not clear what “targeting” might mean.

They wrote it could mean anything from innocuous to violent in the context of the order. One can either target someone with respectful but vigorous political advocacy, or target them and kill them.

At a court hearing earlier this month, prosecutor Molly Gaston reminded Judge Chutkan that a Texas woman had been arrested for issuing violent threats against the judge. In addition, Trump has been fined $5,000 for failing to take down a post attacking a judge’s law clerk from his website.