Special counsel Jack Smith wants Donald Trump tossed into the slammer if he keeps talking about witnesses in the federal election case.
The prosecutor asked the court Wednesday to reinstate a gag order on the ex-president with harsher penalties if he violates it ― including jail, The Washington Post reported.
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan had temporarily suspended a limited gag order on Trump in the federal case against him for allegedly conspiring to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory. The original measure was to bar Trump from disparaging prosecutors, court staff and potential witnesses in a pattern that the court filing called “targeting.”
But Smith’s filing urged the judge to reimpose it after Trump hinted on social media that a potential witness, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, would be a weakling and coward if he agreed to testify in exchange for immunity, as had been reported.
The gag order in Washington, D.C., is not to be confused with the one that Trump violated Wednesday at his civil financial fraud trial in New York City. He was slapped with a $10,000 fine after appearing to call a law clerk “partisan.”
But Trump’s defiance of gag orders perhaps won’t stop, one legal expert said, because it lets him play the victim for his voting base.
