Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked a federal judge Monday to limit a prosecutor’s bid to prevent Mr. Trump from publicly discussing evidence in the criminal case over his efforts to contest the 2020 election outcome.
The Trump team said Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to muzzle the former president is “overbroad” and would violate Mr. Trump’s First Amendment rights.
The legal brief said the Justice Department’s prosecution is taking place amid the campaign for the presidency in 2024, in which Mr. Trump is the GOP frontrunner.
The brief also noted that President Biden himself has made veiled references to the prosecution of his likeliest rival.
“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”
Instead, his lawyers said, the court should issue an order that shields “only genuinely sensitive materials from public view.”
The decision is up to U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.
Protective orders are common in criminal cases, but prosecutors said it’s needed especially in this case because Mr. Trump has posted on social media about “witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him.”
Prosecutors cited in particular a post on Truth Social platform on Friday in which he wrote, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”
Mr. Trump said Monday that Judge Chutkan should recuse herself.
He said Mr. Smith sought “the Judge of his ‘dreams’ (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!), in an attempt to take away my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.”
The indictment accuses Mr. Trump and his allies of lying about the 2020 election results after his loss and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence and state election officials to take action to help him remain in office.
SEE ALSO: Trump wants Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to recuse herself from 2020 election case
Those efforts came to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters breached police barricades around the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the Senate’s certification of the Electoral College vote.
The Trump team said that Mr. Biden has “capitalized on the indictment, posting a thinly veiled reference to his administration’s prosecution of President Trump just hours before [Trump’s] arraignment” on Aug. 3.
The brief cited a social media post by Mr. Biden that day, in which he is pictured holding a cup of coffee and saying, “A cup of Joe never tasted better.”
“Indeed, President Biden promised from the outset that his administration would ensure President Trump ’does not become the next president again,’ adding an unprecedented political dimension to this prosecution,” wrote Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and John Lauro.
“Moreover, the Biden Justice Department waited over two-and-a-half years to seek this indictment, during an election cycle in which President Trump is the leading candidate,” they noted.
Against this backdrop, they wrote, “the government requests the Court assume the role of censor and impose content-based regulations on President Trump’s political speech that would forbid him from publicly discussing or disclosing all non-public documents produced by the government, including both purportedly sensitive materials and non-sensitive, potentially exculpatory documents.”
They said Mr. Trump “does not contest the government’s claimed interest in restricting some of the documents it must produce” in the case.
“However, the need to protect that information does not require a blanket gag order over all documents produced by the government,” they wrote. “Rather, the Court can, and should, limit its protective order to genuinely sensitive materials — a less restrictive alternative that would satisfy any government interest in confidentiality while preserving the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the public.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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