(RightWing.org) – Former President Donald Trump and his legal team spent a significant portion of the week of August 6 wrangling over federal prosecutor efforts to obtain a protective order in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. On August 3, Trump appeared before US Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya for his formal arraignment on four felony counts filed in an August 1 indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team.
The following day, prosecutors filed a four-page motion seeking a protective order regarding the disclosure of discovery, including materials related to grand jury testimony. Trump’s lawyers subsequently filed a response opposing the government’s pleading while he took to his Truth Social page to argue that the proposed protective order would violate his rights.
Trump Argues Government’s Proposed Protection Order Would Violate His Rights
The issuance of protective orders regarding grand jury and other discovery materials is standard practice (pro-forma) in the federal court system, particularly in the District of Columbia. Smith’s team already received one in the Mar-a-Lago documents case from District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee.
Trump disagreed with the government prosecutors’ efforts, as evidenced by the numerous statements he posted on his Truth Social platform and during recent campaign rallies.
For example, Trump posted a couple of Truths on August 7. The first declared his belief that he should not have a protective order entered against him because “it would impinge on my right to free speech.” The former president asserted his First Amendment rights in the second one. He also accused Smith and his “thug prosecutors” of unlawfully leaking information to mainstream media outlets.
Likewise, Trump has spoken out against the protection order while on the campaign trail. The GOP frontrunner told a crowd of supporters at a recent New Hampshire campaign rally that he would continue speaking out about the case, vowing that he wouldn’t allow federal prosecutors to restrict his freedom of speech.
Trump’s Legal Team Formally Opposed Prosecutor’s Efforts To Throttle His Free Speech Rights
While Trump has leveraged himself as the public face for his defense, his lawyers have been busy working to protect his free speech rights through the courts. On August 7, they filed a response opposing the government’s motion for a protection order.
The 29-page pleading forcefully argued that the US Constitution protects Trump’s right to speak out against his accusers publicly. It began by pointing out the irony that federal prosecutors were attempting to “restrict” their client’s free speech protections in a “trial about first amendment rights.”
The response also noted that prosecutors were trying to place limits on Trump’s right to talk about the case during an election cycle while allowing Biden administration officials, prominent Democrats, and their allies in the mainstream media to use the “indictment and its false allegation” to derail his presidential campaign.
Presiding Judge Tanya S. Chutkan held a hearing on the dispute surrounding the protection order on August 11. However, she hasn’t ruled on the motion yet.
Copyright 2023, RightWing.org
