
(DailyVantage.com) – Former President Donald Trump may have handily won his first election battle when he scored a landslide victory in the Iowa caucus, but his legal woes are another matter.
A federal appeals court has rejected the former president’s petition to overturn the gag order imposed by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan barring Trump from making statements regarding his election interference case.
The federal indictment, which is being prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team, accuse Trump of attempting to alter the results of the 2020 presidential elections through several means. These include ordering then-vice-president Mike Pence to “alter the election results,” as well as procuring a group of “fake electors” and spreading false information that the election was “stolen” by President Joe Biden and the Democrats; all these, while Trump supporters stormed and trashed the halls of Congress in the now infamous January 6, 2021 Capitol riots.
The gag order does not bar the former commander-in-chief from talking about the case entirely – it only prohibits him from making statements regarding Smith, his staff, or any other personnel and officer of the court. The order stems from Trump’s penchant for disparaging the members of the prosecution teams and judges involved in his numerous legal cases. Special Counsel Smith, in particular, has earned the monicker “Deranged Jack Smith”, which Trump often uses in his speeches and on social media.
The former president’s last recourse is to take up the matter to the Supreme Court.
Trump is also facing other similar gag orders issued by the other presiding judges in his other cases. New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over Trump’s fraud trial in the state, imposed strict rules prohibiting the former president from making derogatory statements – both online and in real life – against court personnel. The order was imposed after Trump suggested that Engoron’s law clerk had an inappropriate relationship with Democratic New York Senator Chuck Schumer.
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