Former President Donald Trump and his legal team filed an emergency motion on Thursday demanding a halt to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s unprecedented and “unconstitutional” gag order.
The petition for stay, filed in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, argues that Chutkan’s “sweeping, viewpoint-based prior restraint on the core political speech of a major Presidential candidate” does not withstand the legal scrutiny required to silence Trump.
“Given the Gag Order’s extraordinary nature, one would expect an extraordinary justification for it. Yet none exists,” the filing states. “President Trump has made months of public statements about this case, but the Department of Justice (‘the prosecution’) submitted no evidence of any actual or imminent threat to the administration of justice. Instead, when asked about the supposed threat to the case, the prosecution admitted, ‘of course this prejudice is speculative.’”
Trump’s criticisms of the corrupt Department of Justice targeting him “resonate powerfully with tens of millions of Americans,” which is why Trump’s lawyers argue the gag order constitutes an “unconstitutional hostility to President Trump’s viewpoint.”
Trump’s legal team asked that the stay and ruling be issued by Nov. 10, 2023. If the motion is denied, the lawyers threatened to involve the Supreme Court.
“If the Court denies this motion, President Trump requests that the Court extend its administrative stay for seven days to allow him to seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court,” the legal team concluded.
Chutkan, who has a long track record of partisan rulings, first banned Trump from criticizing the corrupt
