A federal judge reinstated a gag order against former President Trump, lifting a temporary hold she placed on it earlier. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued an order Sunday evening, rejecting Trump’s request to set aside the limits on his public statements while he pursues the appeal he’s filed. Details of Chutkan’s ruling were not immediately available due to an outage of the court’s system that makes rulings available to the public. Trump, appeared to acknowledge the decision in a social media post Sunday evening, describing it as an attack on his free speech, reports Politico.
“The Corrupt Biden Administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech. NOT CONSTITUTIONAL! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site about an hour after a notice emerged from the court. Chutkan, who is presiding over special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for charges relating to his bid to subvert the 2020 election, imposed a gag order on the former president this month at the request of prosecutors. The judge said that Trump’s repeated inflammatory attacks on prosecutors, court officials and witnesses had threatened to undermine the case and put people at risk. Trump attorney John Lauro argued the order was vaguely worded, unmanageable and unjustified.