The magistrate judge who arraigned criminally-indicted and disgraced former president Donald John Trump Thursday told him to keep his mouth shut and tone down the threats and hate in his social media posts about his legal troubles, witnesses and prosecutors or he could face arrest and jail to await his upcoming trial on charges of defrauding America and the Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021.
But telling Trump to keep his mouth shut is like trying to stop a crying child. In less than 24 horus after his arraignment in federal court in Washington, DC on Thursday, Trump. all capital letters: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
He threw down the gauntlet, so it’s time to give him what he deserves: JAIL TRUMP UNTIL HIS TRIAL!”
U.S. Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is not someone to threaten. He has taken on, and beaten, international war criminals in the World Court. Dealing with a penny-ante wannabe dictator like Trump shouldn’t be a real challenge.
Smith, of course, will play by the rules, and he asked the court Friday to issue a protective order on the discovery evidence in the case and cited Trump’s incendiary post.
Trump, however, plays by his own rules, ones that ignore the law, morality, honesty, or ethics. He demands absolute loyalty to anyone who works, serves, or encounters him. No exceptions, no reality. He is a president of illusions, who creates fantasies that evade truth. His illusions are his own and absolute in his toxic pool of lies and criminal actions.
By mentioning the incendiary post in an otherwise routine request seeking to keep Mr. Trump from making evidence public, the prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, were drawing the attention of the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, to Mr. Trump’s longstanding habit of attacking those involved in criminal cases against him.
To prove their point, they included a screenshot of the former president’s threatening post from that same evening.
Hours later, Mr. Trump’s campaign responded with a statement calling the post “the definition of political speech.” The statement suggested that the post had not been directed at anyone involved in the election interference case, saying it was meant for Mr. Trump’s political adversaries.
Yeah, sure. Trump is tyring to hide behind a amendment to the very Constitution he is charged with ignoring.
Shortly after, in a standard move early in a criminal prosecution, the government filed its request for a protective order in the case to Judge Chutkan. Prosecutors noted that protections over discovery were “particularly important” in this instance given that Mr. Trump “has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys and others associated with legal matters pending against him.”
On Friday, Mr. Trump’s campaign posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, a 60-second ad describing the five prosecutors who have or are considering cases against him as the “fraud squad” acting on behalf of President Biden. (Those include the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who has brought a civil action.)
The ad represents one of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive denigrations of the prosecutors, whom he has consistently denounced. He has also promised that if elected, he would appoint a “real” special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Biden and his family, proposing eliminating the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.
But the Truth Social post was more direct than comments he has made in the past, in a case where a key aspect of the indictment describes how Mr. Trump’s repeated and false public claims that he was a victim of widespread election fraud led to the violent attack by a pro-Trump mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Judge Chutkan, who was randomly assigned the case when the indictment was filed on Tuesday, has not yet responded to the government’s request. But other judges in cases involving Mr. Trump have warned him about using threatening language.
This is typical hypocrisy for Trump and his cadre of lemmings who kowtow to his every utteracne and illegal stunt. We see it in the political hyperbole of smear artists like GOP Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and his band of acidic followers.
It is time to remind Trump that he is nothing more than a disgraced ex-president at htis point, someone who can, and should, be held accountable to the laws he has ignored for so long.
Jaile the son of a bitch. Put him behind bars, at least, until the Jan. 28 hearing when Judge Chutkan will set the date for a trial to begin. Let him has a taster of what he will face when he is convicterd of his crimes against the America he is charted with defrauded and threatened.
Justice, former prosecutor Glen Kirschner reminds us in the podcast below, matters.
