The Department of Justice is trying to bolster its case for keeping a federal gag order on Donald Trump in the run-up to his election fraud trial in Washington, and prosecutors just got an extra helping of evidence from New York.
Three judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reconsidering that gag order this week asked for fresh examples of Trump’s threatening behavior, now that the former president’s defense lawyers are trying to carve out First Amendment exceptions. So Thursday afternoon, federal prosecutors pointed them to the heaping pile of hate that Trump has recently directed his MAGA battalion to dish out on the state judge currently presiding over the billionaire’s bank fraud trial.
Prosecutors have argued that giving the politician free reign to direct his simmering anger is a recipe for disaster. Cecil W. VanDevender, an attorney on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team, directed their attention to a fiery list compiled on Tuesday by the New York captain in charge of protecting state judges.
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Captain Charles Hollon Captain noted that, after the former president started attacking Justice Arthur F. Engoron and his law clerk, the two received “hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages that have been transcribed into over 275 single spaced pages.”
The judge’s law clerk, attorney Allison Greenfield, has gotten the worst of it after Trump spread vicious lies about her—“resulting in daily doxing” that led to dozens of daily calls, voicemails, and messages from Trump loyalists.
On Thanksgiving, federal prosecutors packaged up the evidence with a singular message in mind: If you remove Trump’s muzzle, he will turn up the heat.
The lesson in New York is stark. The MAGA flock gobbles up anything Trump says and follows his lead. New York court cops assert that the flood of hate spiked when Trump personally attacked the state judge and his right hand legal adviser, diminished when the judge ordered Trump to shut up, then spiked again when Trump violated that gag order.
New York court documents, now filed in federal court too, show the kinds of recorded voicemails that have been left by Trumpists calling the New York judge’s chambers.
“I mean, honestly, you should be assassinated. You should be killed,” said one.
“Trust me. Trust me when I say this. I will come for you. I don’t care. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me either,” said another.
One caller swore to “hunt down… you and your family,” warning that “for every action there’s a reaction.”
Another called Justice Engoron a “treasonous piece of trash snake,” and threatened that “we are coming to remove you permanently.”
During a court hearing on Monday, federal appellate judges seemed reticent to keep caging the Republican presidential candidate ahead of his upcoming trial before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, but the new batch of evidence is meant to convince them otherwise. A similar fight is underway in Manhattan, where the New York Attorney General is fighting to have an appellate court reinstate four gag orders on Trump that were recently in place until a lone appellate judge roasted them.
