According to reports, the legal team representing Trump anticipates that the Manhattan judge overseeing his case will issue a gag order, which would restrict him from speaking publicly about the case while it is pending trial.
The source told the Daily Mail that the Manhattan judge is expected to take the "unprecedented step" and could hinder his ability to campaign on the issue of legal corruption during the primary for the 2024 presidential election.
“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.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, responded to the news about a possible gag order, saying that the former president supports freedom of speech and that any attempts to suppress it should be a cause for concern among Americans.
“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 told Breitbart News.
“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," he added.
Despite the potential gag order, the former president is still planning to make a speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening after voluntarily surrendering himself to the prosecution in New York. If he violates the order, he could face a fine of $1,000 and up to 30 days in jail under New York law, Breitbart News noted.
"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," The Associated Press noted.
There have been differing opinions among Trump's aides and lawyers about whether he should speak to reporters after the arraignment, as the news of the indictment caught many of them off guard. While some lawyers would prefer he stay silent, Trump relishes media attention and his campaign believes that the charges have energized his supporters, the AP noted further.
Trump's legal team is planning to immediately file a motion to have the case dismissed on grounds of a lack of evidence.
“We will take the indictment. We will dissect it,” Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina told CNN on Sunday morning. “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.”
Following Bragg's indictment last week, several legal observers opined that the prosecutor would seek a gag order.
“I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case,” Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice, 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.”
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