BREAKING: Trump Refuses to Accept Gag Order in Federal Election Case

Former President Donald Trump isn’t lying down against the Obama-appointed judge who imposed a gag order on him in his federal election interference case.

On Monday attorneys for the Republican leader requested that the full federal appeals for Washington, D.C. review the previous order by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan preventing Trump from criticizing officers of the court or engaging in any speech which could be considered witness tampering. In the meantime, the president’s lawyers demanded the the appeals court lift the gag order, which has been in place since October.

Already, the latitude granted to President Trump has been debated vigorously. Two weeks ago, a three-judge panel of the appeals court concurred that he is free to launch attacks at Biden Justice Department special council Jack Smith who has charged him with Civil War-era charges related to inciting an insurrection on January 6th, 2021. President Trump has previously accused Smith of performing “political hit jobs” against politicians to further his own career.

Despite ruling that President Trump’s remarks do not have to carry a “clear and present danger” in order to be acceptable, his attorneys took issue with any level of his First Amendment rights being curtailed.

“This petition presents a question of exceptional importance,” the lawyers wrote in a filing obtained by the New York Times. “Whether a district court may gag the core political speech of the leading candidate for president of the United States — disregarding the First Amendment rights of over 100 million American voters — based on speculation about undefined possible future harms.”

If the full appeals court declines to review the gag order, President Trump still has the opportunity to petition the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already agreed to take up the president’s claim that he is immune from prosecution.

Smith’s case against President Trump hinges on evidence that he will present in court after obtaining access to the president’s private Twitter messages and use of apps in the days surrounding J6. He has asked Judge Chutkan to throw Trump in jail for violating the terms of his gag order, something she declined to do. Attorneys for the president have laid out a strategy to delay the trial by months, requesting millions of pages of documents and thousands of hours of video footage that Smith may use in court, extending the window of discovery and review until possibly past the November 2024 elections.