With a D.C. Appeals Court set to make a ruling on a gag order imposed upon Donald Trump this coming week, a former U.S. attorney claimed lawyers for the embattled former president have been "misleading" the court as they battle with the Department of Justice.
Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, former prosecutor Barbara McQuade claimed the court needs to take seriously the threats being aimed at court officials in multiple jurisdictions after Trump ranted about them in speeches and on his Truth Social platform.
According to McQuade, arguments made by Trump's lawyers last week had nothing to do with the matter at hand.
"Let's speak quickly about this Appeals Court appearance for Donald Trump," host Phang prompted. "He seems to spend a lot of time in trial court, he is in appellate courts a lot. There was a filing done in the New York AG civil fraud case appeal by the state, by New York state. It detailed thousands of horrible, violent, antisemitic messages that were being received by the law clerk as well as Judge [Arthur] Engoron."
"From an evidentiary perspective, does the Appeals Court take that into perspective what is going to be hearing oral arguments tomorrow?" she asked.
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'I think so, Katie," the former prosecutor replied. "That is because it shows that it's not imaginative or speculative harm. These are real threats coming in every day and disrupting the business of the court, putting its employees in harm's way."
"One of the things that the [Trump] lawyers have done, that is very misleading here, is to look at cases outside of the context of court, of opinion criminal cases. You know, prior restraints are frowned upon of course. Anything that limits core political speech is antithetical to the 1st Amendment."
"That's not the world that we are in," she elaborated. "We are in the world of a trial. And so inside a trial to protect the parties, to protect court staff and to protect the fair administration of justice, those rules are different. And so I hope that the court sees the light and understand the very threat on the one hand versus the restriction on the other."
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