Judge Shoots Down DOJ's Request to Have Trump Jailed
Well, we can strike one Democrat fantasy off the list — at least for now.
According to Newsweek, despite pressure from the Department of Justice, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan won’t be sending former President Donald Trump to jail if he violates the court’s strict gag order in the case related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
It was a bit of good news included in a footnote of Chutkan’s Sunday ruling that reinstated the gag order. In the footnote, Chutkan refused a prosecution request to make the former president’s freedom contingent on his following the strictures of the gag order.
“The government also asks the court to incorporate the Order into Defendant’s conditions of release …,” she wrote in the first footnote of the ruling. “Even assuming that request is procedurally proper, the court concludes that granting it is not necessary to effectively enforce the Order at this time.”
Still, Chutkan reinstated the gag order — requested by special counsel Jack Smith last month — after a temporary hold. Smith had argued that Trump’s comments about the charges and the personalities involved in the case could intimidate witnesses and interfere with the prosecution.
Chutkan wrote that “the right to a fair trial is not [Trump’s] alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.”
Now, the gag order itself is a farce, particularly in the middle of an election process in which the government is both prosecuting and silencing the Biden administration’s main political opponent.
Thankfully, Trump doesn’t seem to particularly care, since Newsweek noted that “just 75 minutes after Chutkan gave notice that the order had been reinstated, Trump appeared to violate it by attacking his former attorney general and a potential witness, William P. Barr.”
That attack came not to silence any testimony Barr may give in the trial, mind you, but was a response to the former attorney general criticizing Trump’s speaking skills.
“His verbal skills are limited,” Barr said during a speech at the University of Chicago on Friday, as The Hill reported.
“If you get him away from ‘very, very, very’ … you know, the adjectives … they’re unfamiliar to him and they sort of spill out, and he goes too far,” Barr said. “He’s not very disciplined when it comes to what he says.”
Well, Trump fired up his Truth Social account and laid into the former attorney general.
“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” Trump wrote in the post.
“So now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited,'” he continued.
“Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”
Well, cue liberal outrage. Here’s prolific, witless social media polluter Ron Filipkowski, editor of the liberal website Meidas Touch, alleging that the post violates the gag order:
Since Bill Barr is a witness against Trump in the J6 case, this new post violates his gag order in DC. pic.twitter.com/9q4MwM0fNP
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 30, 2023
This is likely true, but it’s also exactly what’s wrong with the gag order in the first place.
All of the court cases against the former president that just so happened to come together right as the presidential campaign season geared up — what a coincidence! — put us in terra nova as a republic. However, out of all of these, the Jan. 6 case presents the thorniest one, because it involves political speech that will play a critical part in the 2024 campaign if Trump wins the Republican nominee.
Virtually anyone involved in this case in the most tangential manner can say the most vicious calumnies about Trump and what happened during the Capitol incursion — or otherwise, as Bill Barr proved by calling a man given to two-hour extemporaneous stump speeches verbally “limited.”
Trump, however? He’s expected to shut his trap by order of the court.
And if he doesn’t, there are more than a few Democrats who want him in jail.
There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Judge Chutkan, but blocking the DOJ from sending Trump to jail for violating a preposterous, un-American gag order isn’t one of them.
Three cheers aren’t in order, but maybe a quarter of a halfhearted cheer is called for.
For all her faults, Chutkan made sure on Sunday that we didn’t slip further into banana republic territory — no matter how much her leftist cohort wants to see the former president in prison.
It’s worth noting, though, that the footnote ends with “at this time.”
So, time will tell. And Americans will be watching.
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