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The Department of Justice submitted a court filing on Thanksgiving arguing that a gag order against the former president must remain while pointing to documents filed as part of the $250 million civil fraud trial in New York.
On Thursday, November 23, Cecil Vandevender, an assistant special counsel for the Department of Justice, notified the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals of a document which said that a gag order needs to be reinstated against Trump during the civil proceedings in New York, where state Attorney General Letitia James has accused the former president of fraudulently inflating the value of his properties in financial statements.
The government's court filings pointed the appeals court to one section in particular, in which an employee at the New York State Unified Court System details the "hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages" which had been sent to Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the civil trial, as well as the judge's law clerk Allison Greenfield. Engoron fined Trump twice in October for violating his gag order after the former president failed to remove a Truth Social post targeting Greenfield from his website more than two weeks after the judge ordered it be deleted, and then a second time after the former president described Greenfield as a "very partisan" individual to reporters outside the New York courtroom.
The appeals court in D.C. is considering limiting the scope of the gag order imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkan against Trump in the federal election case, which prohibits the former president from attacking prosecutors such as Special Counsel Jack Smith or any potential witness ahead of next year's federal trial.
Trump and his lawyers have argued that any gag order against a presidential candidate is a violation of his First Amendment rights. A judge paused the gag order in New York which Engoron imposed to stop Trump attacking court staff during the proceedings in social media posts and public statements to consider the constitutional arguments.
The D.C. appeals court previously requested that the DOJ provide evidence of "ongoing threats and harassment" surrounding Trump regarding the discussions to keep the gag order in the federal case. Vandevender then submitted the evidence cited in New York on Thanksgiving in order to bolster their arguments that the gag order imposed by Chutkan should remain in place.
Trump's legal team has been contacted for comment via email.
According to an affidavit cited by the DOJ from Charles Hollon, who works in the Public Safety Department's Judicial Threats Assessment Unit, there are 275 single space pages worth of transcribed threatening messages and voicemails which have been left for Engoron and his court staff since early October.
Several of the "threatening, harassing, disparaging and antisemitic" which were left on Engoron's chamber's voicemail were cited in the New York affidavit. One of the messages to Engoron states: "Trust me. Trust me when I say this. I will come for you. I don't care. Ain't nobody gonna stop me either."
A second transcript of the message calls Engoron a "dirty, treasonous piece of trash snake," and warns "we are coming to remove you permanently."
Hollon argued that the "deluge" of messages which threaten the safety of court staff is the type of "countervailing interest" which warrants the reintroduction of the gag order.
"The messages received by Justice Engoron and his staff every day has created an ongoing security risk for the judge, his staff and his family," Hollon said.
"The implementation of the limited gag orders resulted in a decrease in the number of threats, harassment, and disparaging messages that the judge and his staff received. However, when Mr. Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased."
In a November 17 statement, Trump's office attacked the gag order imposed on him by Chutkan as an attempt to restrict what he can say during his 2024 presidential campaign. Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, has denied all wrongdoing as in the 2020 election interference and New York civil fraud cases, and accuses both of them of being politically motivated "witch hunts" which aim to prevent him winning the 2024 election.
"The Gag Order appoints an unelected federal judge to censor what the leading candidate for President of the United States may say to all Americans, just weeks before the Iowa caucuses," the statement said.
"No court has ever upheld a gag order on core political speech at the height of a campaign. Just yesterday, the New York Appellate Division stayed a similar gag order against President Trump's core political speech. The unconstitutional Gag Order in the DC case should be speedily reversed."
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more