Back there in the Stone Age of late September in this space, the headline was:
Trump vs. a Corrupt Political Establishment
Democracy under assault.
It was noted at the time that:
The serious problem here is that as events have played out since Trump appeared on the political scene, one public official or institution after another has revealed themself as corrupt.
The list that includes New York Attorney General James, New York Justice Engoron, and local DA Bragg is long and, one suspects, getting longer.
Now you can add U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to the list.
Recently there have been a flurry of headlines like this one from the Washington Post:
D.C. judge formally issues gag order against Trump.
The story says:
U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued a limited gag order against Donald Trump that prohibits the former president from disparaging prosecutors, witnesses and court personnel involved in his upcoming election-obstruction trial in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Chutkan published the written version of her order on Tuesday — a day after she held a hearing on the matter and said she would impose the gag. A few hours later, Trump and his lawyers filed a notice saying they intended to appeal the ruling to the federal appeals court in D.C. Trump has said the order violates his First Amendment rights as he is running for president.
Got that? A federal judge — an Obama appointee at that — has deliberately and willfully violated an American citizen’s constitutional right to free speech. And, quite obviously, this is no average American. It is a former president of the United States who is also, no accident here, a candidate for re-election — which means that the judge has set her sights on election interference by silencing a candidate.
To read the text of the gag order is to take a laughable trip into a circus of self-regard and self pity.
Example?
The judge says:
In order to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings, it is necessary to impose certain restrictions on public statements by interested parties. Undisputed testimony cited by the government demonstrates that when Defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed. Since his indictment, and even after the government filed the instant motion, Defendant has continued to make similar statements attacking individuals involved in the judicial process, including potential witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff. Defendant has made those statements to national audiences using language communicating not merely that he believes the process to be illegitimate, but also that particular individuals involved in it are liars or “thugs,” or deserve death. The court finds that such statements pose a significant and immediate risk that (1) witnesses will be intimidated or otherwise unduly influenced by the prospect of being themselves targeted for harassment or threats; and (2) attorneys, public servants, and other court staff will themselves become targets for threats and harassment. And that risk is largely irreversible in the age of the Internet; once an individual is publicly targeted, even revoking the offending statement may not abate the subsequent threats, harassment, or other intimidating effects during the pretrial as well as the trial stages of this case.
To which I can only say: Oh boo-hoo.
Look.
It is a fact of public life — a sad fact, to be sure, but a long-established fact nonetheless — that long, long before Donald Trump ever rode down that escalator into the 2016 presidential race, simply being in public life can bring unwanted behavior to those who are participating in public life.
The obvious key word here is “public.” The moment anyone steps into the world of “public service,” they are putting themselves out there for others to ridicule, scorn, and, yes indeed, threaten them. A situation multiplied endlessly by both the internet and television.
As someone who had my share of time in the spotlight during the 2016 campaign as a CNN commentator, I was on the receiving end of a small cascade of anonymous, threatening-sounding phone calls and harassment. Not to mention being yelled at in the grocery store.
Is it fun? No. Is it an altogether normal feature in “public service”? The answer is resoundingly yes.
Those people cited by the judge, the “attorneys, public servants, and other court staff” who “themselves become targets for threats and harassment” clearly have no business whatsoever being in public service. This was put more succinctly by America’s 33rd president, Democrat Harry Truman, who had spent a lifetime in the political arena. Said Truman:
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Clearly, those the judge cites as Trump targets — the “attorneys, public servants, and other court staff” — can’t stand the heat of the kitchen that is public service. That being the case, the answer is not to issue a gag order on the former president stripping him of his God-given right to free speech but for them to get out of public service.
As noted previously in this space — now adding in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan — her conduct and that of other prosecutors and judges in New York or Georgia is:
a startling reveal of something millions of Americans have now come to vividly understand. Whole sections of the American political establishment are corrupt: obsessed with power and all too willingly ready to target anyone whose political views they find unacceptable. Like, say, conservatives.
And at the top of the corrupt establishment’s target list is, without question, former President Donald Trump.
This gag order is not simply a disgrace; it is a dangerous disgrace. A move by a corrupt judge to protect her circle of insiders.
And someone in a responsible position in Congress should be looking into the one response this kind of corruption invites:
Impeachment.