Gag Order Isn’t Just To Protect Jury Pool, Jack Smith Has A Bigger Plan

You didn’t need to be Nostradamus to see this one coming. Not one bit. Jack Smith asked Tanya Chutkun, the judge in the Trump classified documents case, for a “narrow” gag order prohibiting Donald Trump from talking about the 2020 election. The rationale behind this move is to keep a jury pool untainted. But you know Trump. He’s got to blow off steam and foment conspiracy theory like other people change their socks. So he went bonkers, as predicted.

Now as the news starts to travel, different people are weighing in on what all this means. Andrew Weissmann was just on TV and he said that Jack Smith’s D.C. filing “accuses Trump’s DC counsel, who is John Lauro, of violating the local rule about making public statements about the case; those statements were indeed a direct violation of Local Criminal Rule 57,” according to Weissmann,

Then he said, “Lead counsel ‘violated Local Criminal Rule 57.7(b),’ which prohibits attorneys from releasing public extrajudicial statements regarding, among other things, ‘the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses’ and the ‘merits of the case or the evidence in the case.'”

Okay. Hold that in your mind and then look at this. Because I think this legal analyst is on to something. I think this is the direction Jack Smith is going and this is what he’s setting the stage for.

1/ To be sure, Special Counsel Smith's proposed narrow gag order in January 6th case is premised on threat to jury pool.

But

It is surely one step closer to raising the concern that Trump's intimidation of witnesses violates his conditions of release.

Note these passages.👇 pic.twitter.com/ykrEF3W0wY

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 15, 2023

Take a closer look.

Here’s the second one in readable form.

Trump has already violated the terms of his conditions of release and if it was anybody else but him behaving this way, the person would have already lost their liberty and would be chilling in a jail cell until March 4. That may be the direction that Jack Smith is going. I don’t know. But he would certainly be warranted in pursuing that course of action.

And I think Trump knows that Tanya Chutkan is just the judge who would lower the boom if anybody would. That’s why he wants her to recuse herself, which is not going to happen.

Mark my words now, this is a turning point, Friday, September 15. Things are going to ratchet up and get intense pretty quick. Judge Chutkan’s security has been tightened after receiving death threats. The death threats are from the people that Trump just won’t stop cuing to be crazy. Chutkan warned Trump about making “inflammatory statements” about the case and he’s shined her on and he keeps making them, including his response to Smith’s filing a short while ago.

This is heating up. Trump fears Jack Smith and he has reason to do so. Smith is a no bullshit guy and he’s going by the book. As I’ve said before, he’s Eliot Ness to Trump’s Al Capone.