The Manhattan judge presiding over the indictment of Donald Trump is expected to place a gag order on him as the case awaits trial, according to Trump’s legal team.
An insider source close to the former president’s legal team told the Daily Mail the judge would take an “unprecedented step” to silence Trump.
The gag order could have a disastrous effect on Trump’s ability to call out corruption in his campaign.
“The Trump legal team now thinks that the Manhattan judge will take the unprecedented step of silencing the presidential frontrunner with an unconstitutional gag order tomorrow,” the source said.
“The Trump legal team is considering adding a First Amendment lawyer to the effort to combat this and will fight it all the way,” the source added.
In response to the possible gag order, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Breitbart that the gag order is an effort to stifle free speech.
“President Trump stands for transparency and our American Constitution, and any attempt to prevent him, the leading candidate for President, from exercising his First Amendment right is a tyrannical, third-world country move which further proves that this is nothing more than a political witch-hunt utilizing a weaponized justice system,” Cheung said.
“All Americans should be concerned about their rights being violated, and any attempt to obstruct President Trump’s right to use his voice in order to speak truth to power should never be tolerated. The whole targeted crusade is a complete political farce by the Manhattan DA meant to manipulate and interfere with an election against President Trump and his supporters.”
If Trump were to break his gag order, he could be imprisoned for up to 30 days and slapped with a $1,000 fine.
However, Trump plans to speak at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday after submitting himself to the prosecution in New York.
As the Associated Press reported:
Trump will hold the event at his Mar-a-Lago club after returning from Manhattan, where he is expected to voluntarily turn himself in. He is expected to be joined in Florida by supporters as he tries to project an image of strength and defiance and turn the charges into a political asset to boost his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump aides and lawyers had been going back and forth over the wisdom of his appearing before reporters after the arraignment as they grasped the news of an indictment that caught many of them by surprise. Trump has been catapulted back into the headlines by the criminal charges, and he relishes media attention, and while some of his lawyers would have preferred he stay silent, his campaign believes the development has energized his supporters.
Trump’s legal team plans to file a motion to dismiss the case immediately.
“We will take the indictment. We will dissect it,” Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina said.
“The team will look at every, every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge. And of course, I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming because there’s no law that fits this,” Tacopina added.
Last week, legal experts predicted Bragg would implement a gag order following the indictment.
“I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case,” former federal prosecutor with the DOJ, Duncan Levin, told Insider.
“Gag orders are very common in criminal cases, particularly in cases where there is an enormous amount of pretrial publicity like this one,” Levin added.
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump said the judge had ‘railroaded’ his former CFO to get him to take a plea deal.
“The judge “assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a “Case” that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME,” Trump wrote.
Meanwhile, the indictment has bolstered Trump’s poll numbers and led to a massive boost in campaign donations.
As The Daily Fetched reported, Trump is commanding a blistering lead in the GOP primary and over Joe Biden in a likely general election matchup.
Following the indictment, more voters in both primary and general elections say they would likely vote for Trump.
The poll was from Trump’s pollster John McLaughlin which gathered in-depth post-indictment data after Trump’s indictment.
READ: Trump Raises a Blistering $4 Million in Just 24 Hours after Indictment
