At least one Democratic pipe dream may be dismissed for the time being.
According to Newsweek, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan will not arrest former President Donald Trump for violating the court’s severe gag order in the case relating to the January 6, 2021, intrusion into the U.S. Capitol. This is despite a demand from the Department of Justice.
In a footnote to his Sunday verdict, Chutkan upheld the gag order, which was welcome news. According to the footnote, Chutkan denied a motion from prosecutors to condition the former president’s release on his compliance with the gag order.
“The government also asks the court to incorporate the Order into Defendant’s conditions of release …,” she wrote in the first footnote of the ruling. “Even assuming that request is procedurally proper, the court concludes that granting it is not necessary to effectively enforce the Order at this time.”
Still, Chutkan upheld the gag order—obtained by special counsel Jack Smith last month—after a short suspension. Smith said that Trump’s public statements regarding the charges and individuals involved in the case might frighten away witnesses and impede the prosecution.
Chutkan wrote that “the right to a fair trial is not [Trump’s] alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.”
When the government is prosecuting and suppressing the Biden administration’s biggest political opponent during an electoral process, the gag order becomes a joke in and of itself.
Newsweek reported that “just 75 minutes after Chutkan gave notice that the order had been reinstated, Trump appeared to violate it by attacking his former attorney general and a potential witness, William P. Barr.” Fortunately, Trump doesn’t seem to care too much.
This was a reaction to former AG Barr’s criticism of Trump’s public speaking abilities, not an attempt to stifle whatever testimony Barr may make at trial.
“His verbal skills are limited,” Barr said during a speech at the University of Chicago on Friday, as The Hill reported.
“If you get him away from ‘very, very, very’ … you know, the adjectives … they’re unfamiliar to him and they sort of spill out, and he goes too far,” Barr said. “He’s not very disciplined when it comes to what he says.”
Well, Trump fired up his Truth Social account and laid into the former attorney general.
“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” Trump wrote in the post.
“So now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited,’” he continued.
“Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”
Prepare for a liberal uproar.
Here’s leftist website Meidas Touch editor and serial social media troll Ron Filipkowski complaining that the post breaks the gag order:
Since Bill Barr is a witness against Trump in the J6 case, this new post violates his gag order in DC. pic.twitter.com/9q4MwM0fNP
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 30, 2023
This is probably accurate, but it also highlights the fundamental flaw in the gag order.
We were thrust into uncharted territory as a republic when a slew of legal proceedings against the outgoing president coincided with the beginning of the presidential election season. If Trump is elected as the Republican nominee in 2020, there will be many difficult cases to resolve. However, the one on January 6 is particularly challenging because it contains political speech that will be essential in the 2024 campaign.
Virtually everyone connected in this case most tangentially may spew the most venomous calumnies about Trump and what transpired during the Capitol incursion—or otherwise, as Bill Barr showed by labeling a man used to two-hour extemporaneous stump speeches verbally “limited.”
However, Trump? The court has ordered him to stop his charade.
Many Democrats would like to see Trump behind bars if he doesn’t.
Judge Chutkan has a lot going against her, but her refusal to let the Department of Justice put Trump in jail for breaking an absurd and un-American gag order isn’t one of them.
Maybe a quarter of a cheer is in order, but not three full ones.
Despite her many flaws, Chutkan ensured that we did not take another step toward banana republic status on Sunday, even though her socialist peers would want to see the previous president locked up.
The footnote does, however, conclude with the words “at this time.”
We shall see what the future holds. Americans in particular will be tuning in.