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Prosecutors have asked a judge to reimpose a gag order against Donald Trump after the former president allegedly wrote "threatening" messages about his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who is reported to be cooperating with authorities.
The prosecution team asked Washington D.C.-based judge, Tanya Chutkan, to reimpose a gagging order in Trump's federal election interference case and accused him of taking advantage of a stay in the order to spread negative messages about Meadows and others.
Chutkan initially imposed the partial gag order on Trump because of numerous comments in which he criticized prosecutors and witnesses in the case.
She paused that order temporarily while Trump prepares to appeal it at a higher court.
"The defendant has capitalized on the court's administrative stay to, among other prejudicial conduct, send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case," prosecutor Molly Gaston wrote in a submission on Wednesday night. "Unless the court lifts the administrative stay, the defendant will not stop his harmful and prejudicial attacks."
Gaston highlighted Trump's post on the social media site, Truth Social, on Tuesday, in which he denounced the cooperating witnesses in the case as "cowards" and "weaklings."
"I don't think that Mark Meadows is one of them," Trump wrote, "but who really knows?"
Gaston, a prosecutor with the office of Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith, wrote in her court submission on Wednesday that Trump made "an attempt to influence and intimidate" Meadows.
"In the few days since the administrative stay has been in place, the defendant has returned to the very sort of targeting that the order prohibits, including attempting to intimidate and influence foreseeable witnesses, and commenting on the substance of their testimony," Gaston's submission to Chutkan stated.
ABC News reported that Meadows is cooperating with Smith's team in exchange for immunity. Meadows allegedly told Smith's team that Trump had made baseless claims that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election.
"Mark Meadows NEVER told me that allegations of significant fraud (about the RIGGED Election!) were baseless. He certainly didn't say that in his book!" Trump posted.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, was indicted in August in Washington D.C. and faces four felony counts before Chutkan for alleged illegal interference with the 2020 presidential election. Meadows faces two criminal charges in a separate state case in Georgia, where he and Trump are both accused of election tampering.
Meadows has pleaded not guilty to those charges and is currently in the middle of a fight to move the state case to federal court. Trump has pleaded not guilty to both the federal and the Georgia election interference charges.
Newsweek has contacted attorneys for Meadows and Trump for comment via email.
In a statement to CBS News, Meadows' lawyer, George Terwilliger, said that the reports of an immunity deal are "largely inaccurate."
Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the ABC report and has contacted Smith's office for comment.
The report stated that Meadows repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was no evidence of any widespread voter fraud which cost him the race against Biden.
It said Meadows told federal prosecutors that he believed Trump was being "dishonest" in the early hours of November 4, 2020, when the former president said in a press conference "frankly, we did win this election," when a significant number of votes across the country had not been counted by that point.
The reports of Meadows speaking to Smith's team at least three times this year—including once before a federal grand jury—could be a significant update in the federal investigation.
Meadows has long been considered a key figure in the attempt to keep Trump in power after he lost the election and was one of the former president's closest allies in the runup to the January 6 Capitol attack.
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About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more