Cutting it awful close on Monday, Donald Trump’s response to the Justice Department’s request that the judge overseeing his most recent legal entanglements restrict what he can say in public and on social media arrived just 5 minutes before the court’s 5 p.m. deadline.
In a 29-page filing seeking to narrow the government’s proposed protective order, attorneys for the former president told the court that their client’s legal woes are actually the result of a political calculation on the part of President Biden and his administration as the 2024 election draws closer and that the 45th president is protected by the First Amendment when he declares, a day after his arrest, that “if you go after me, I’m coming after you!”
“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights. Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations,” lawyers for Trump told U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in filings.
Furthermore, Trump’s lawyers say, the U.S. Constitution protects his right to speak about the case during campaign rallies and to insist on social media that Special Counsel Jack Smith is “deranged” and the judge randomly assigned to the case is Smith’s “number one draft pick” who Trump will demand recuse herself based on, Trump claimed, “very powerful grounds.”
Trump’s most recent legal woes, according to constitutional scholar and senior Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are nothing more than justice playing out as it should.
“No one is above the law, not even a former President of the United States,” Warren said Monday. “I see our judicial system working as it is intended to work — that is, it was an independent investigation, the evidence was brought between 23 random citizens who then voted to go forward with the indictment and now there is a court date to be set and a trial.”
“The reality is that Donald Trump conspired to steal votes, conspired to steal an election, he conspired to steal our democracy. It was a conspiracy to deny the American people its newly elected government. That is a crime against our constitution. It makes him no more or no less than a modern day Benedict Arnold,” Sen. Ed. Markey added.
The January 6th case in D.C. was not the only court proceeding concerning the 45th President to make the news on Monday.
A federal judge dismissed a counter-defamation lawsuit filed by Trump against author E. Jean Carroll, who Trump has been ordered to pay $5 million after a jury found the ex-commander-in-chief had “sexually abused” and defamed her.
Carroll later implied that Trump had raped her; Trump sued, claiming “sexual abuse” is not rape under New York law.
In dismissing the case Monday, Judge Lewis Kaplan made clear that though the former president may have skirted New York’s penal code when it comes to the commission of the crime of rape, his actions mean he did in fact “rape” Carroll as the term is commonly understood.
Also on Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench and who is overseeing his alleged possession of highly classified materials he did not have clearance to keep, revealed there is a second grand jury operating in Washington D.C. and concerned with Trump’s possession of classified documents.
Cannon has ordered the Smith’s team to explain why the second grand jury exists.
Trump is scheduled to be in New Hampshire Tuesday for an afternoon campaign rally at Windham High School.
