Federal Appeals Court Hands Trump Win: Pauses Gag Order in 'Election interference' Case
Former President Donald Trump was handed a victory — albeit a temporary one — from a most unlikely place: an appeals court panel consisting of judges appointed by Democrats.
A three-judge panel pressed the pause button on a gag order in his trial for interference in the 2020 election in a Friday order.
The three judges were all appointed by Democratic presidents, according to CBS News — two appointed by former President Barack Obama and one by President Joe Biden.
The order puts on hold an order by Judge Tanya Chutkan that prohibited Trump from public comment on special counsel Jack Smith, the court staff, and witnesses (or potential witnesses) in the upcoming trial.
Trump’s legal team had appealed Chutkan’s gag order and requested the stay only a day earlier. The appeals court decision does not mean anything about its opinion on the gag order itself, but is designed only to give the court more time to review the case.
“The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” the order stated.
In Thursday’s appeal, Trump’s attorneys argued that Chutkan was “muzzling President Trump’s core political speech during an historic Presidential campaign.”
They also described her gag order as “viewpoint based” as well as overly broad.
Chutkan had previously paused her own order to allow for arguments from the defendant against it. She said the gag order was designed to protect the integrity of the trial itself.
Smith’s prosecutors had asked for a broader gag order, which Chutkan had denied.
The Friday order also established a schedule for briefing the D.C. Court of Appeals prior to oral arguments on November 20.
You can read the entire stay order below.
Stay Order by The Western Journal on Scribd
Trump remains under a gag order in the civil trial brought against him by New York Attorney General Tish James for alleged fraud in the conduct of his businesses in that state.
Trump has been fined in that case twice for violating the gag order, Politico noted.
The election interference case before Chutkan is currently scheduled to go to trial in March.
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