Prosecutors ask for protective order after Trump makes threatening statement on Truth Social

When Donald Trump was arraigned on Thursday for charges related to his alleged attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya made it very clear that a condition of his release was to refrain from making threatening statements, seeking revenge or attempting to incite violence in any way, but it doesn’t seem as though he listened. 

On Friday, Trump made the following statement to Truth Social: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Easily read as the sort of threatening incitement he was warned against, prosecutors responded by requesting U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a protective order in the case. As AP News points out, “The order — which is different from a so-called “gag order” — would limit what information Trump and his legal team could share publicly about the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.” Per their reporting, “A Trump spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the former president’s post ‘is the definition of political speech,’ and was made in response to ‘dishonest special interest groups and Super PACs.'”

Prosecutors expressed to Judge Chutkan that statements like the one made by Trump on Friday, “could have a “harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case.”