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Former President Donald Trump's allies are lashing out over reports that the ex-president could be handed a gag order while being arraigned on Tuesday.
Trump has repeatedly blasted his indictment as a politically motivated "persecution" and said that the judge assigned to the case "hates" him. Some legal experts have suggested that the former president's behavior could lead to an order to restrict his speech.
However, Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina insisted during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday that a gag order would not be issued.
"Won't happen," Tacopina said. "[A gag order] would really set ablaze the passions and the tempers that already have been inflamed by this case. You know, people view this as a political persecution ... There's no scenario where that's going to happen."
Tacopina also said that any order forcing the former president to hold his tongue would "directly interfere" with the 2024 presidential election, predicting that prosecutors would not even request one.
Former Trump adviser Roger Stone offered no prediction on whether an order would be issued but similarly argued that it would amount to "election interference" while speaking on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight.
"Not only do I think the gag order would be unconstitutional—nowhere does it say you lose your free-speech rights if you're charged with a crime—but more importantly, it's election interference," Stone said on Monday.
Host Tucker Carlson agreed that a gag order would interfere with the election, while also warning that New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan choosing to issue such an order would be evidence that "darkness has descended."
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson put Stone under a gag order during his 2019 trial on felony charges related to the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The order was handed down after Stone shared to social media an image featuring the judge's head near the crosshairs of a gun.
Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., also lashed out over the possibility of his father being legally gagged during the Monday episode of his Triggered podcast, saying that such a move would be "totally unprecedented" and an attempt to use "the political justice system to silence your political opponents."
Trump recently faced backlash after sharing an image of himself holding a baseball bat alongside a picture of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner cited the image as a "threat" while making the case for "commonsense restrictions" to be imposed on Trump's speech.
"I hope [Justice] Merchan is the first person, at least since [President] Joe Biden in the [2020 presidential election] debates to tell Donald Trump, in substance, 'shut up,'" Kirschner said during the latest episode of his Justice Matters podcast.
"No more lies," he continued. "No more threats. No more disinformation, propaganda thrown into the public square in an attempt to poison the jury pool. Shut up."
Kirschner went on to say that Trump would still be allowed to proclaim his innocence and campaign for president if the judge does decide to place "limitations" on his speech.
"It will be a challenge for [Justice] Merchan and the prosecutors to craft some commonsense limitations on Donald Trump's dangerous speech," said Kirschner. "But I'm quite sure they're up to the task. And it has to be done."
A spokesperson for Trump previously denounced Kirschner as "a notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis" in a statement to Newsweek.
Criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Duncan Levin told Insider last week that it was "extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case."
While the charges against Trump will not be unsealed until the arraignment on Tuesday afternoon, two anonymous sources with knowledge of the case previously told the Associated Press that the former president will face multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony.
Newsweek has reached out via email to the office of Trump for comment.
About the writer
Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter based in New York. Her focus is on reporting national politics, where she ... Read more