In a court filing on Monday, attorneys for Donald Trump requested changes be made to a proposed protective order in the federal case concerning the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s attorney argue that special counsel Jack Smith is trying to silence President Biden’s top political opponent ahead of the 2024 election.
“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” Trump’s lawyers write in the filing. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”
It goes on to say that Biden has “capitalized on the indictment, posting a thinly veiled reference to his administration’s prosecution of President Trump just hours before arraignment.” That reference is a post on X featuring a video of Biden drinking out of a “Dark Brandon” mug with the caption, “A cup of Joe never tasted better.”
The Justice Department has asked U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, to issue a protective order over evidence in the case.
The request came after Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday in all capital letters: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”
A Trump spokesman said in a statement that the post is “the definition of political speech” and was written in response to “dishonest special interest groups and Super PACS.” But the prosecutors in the January 6 case requested an order that would prevent Trump and his lawyers from disclosing materials provided by the government to anyone other than people on his legal team, possible witnesses, the witnesses’ lawyers, or others approved by the court.
The order would also place stricter limits on “sensitive materials,” including grand-jury witness testimony and materials obtained through sealed search warrants.
Trump’s lawyers accuse the government of asking the court to “assume the role of censor and impose content-based regulations on President Trump’s political speech.”
The filing argues that the need to protect sensitive information does not require a “blanket gag order over all documents produced by the government.” Trump’s team wants a more limited protective order that would apply only to “genuinely sensitive materials,” which it calls a “a less restrictive alternative that would satisfy any government interest in confidentiality while preserving the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the public.
The filing comes after Chutkan, on Saturday, gave Trump’s legal team a deadline of Monday at 5 p.m. to respond to the DOJ’s request.
Trump’s legal team initially filed a request to extend that deadline to Thursday and to hold a hearing on the order, but the judge rejected that request.
Trump’s lawyers decry the quick-turn deadline in the filing.
“Despite the extraordinarily limited time President Trump had to prepare this response, we attempted to confer with the government in good faith over the weekend by sending our proposed revisions and arranging multiple phone calls,” the filing reads. “Setting aside our general dispute regarding the treatment of non-sensitive documents, we had hoped the government would engage with us in a collaborative dialogue, aimed at fashioning mutually agreeable language for numerous procedural and definitional clauses in the Proposed Order.”
The lawyers accuse the DOJ of declining a “cooperative approach” and “refusing to provide any real-time feedback. “Ultimately, just hours before our deadline, the government notified defense counsel it would oppose most of our revisions,” it adds.
Trump’s team is reiterating its request for a hearing on the matter.
Trump’s attorneys argue that the DOJ’s request that the order limit disclosure of materials to only defense counsel and persons employed by the defense counsel is “unreasonable and unworkable.” Trump’s lawyers insist that the defense should be allowed to bring on volunteer attorneys or others without paid employment arrangements to assist with the case.
In the special counsel’s classified-documents case against Trump, the magistrate judge agreed to a protective order that bans Trump and his legal team from publicly disclosing evidence turned over to them by prosecutors without prior approval. However, prosecutors are now requesting another, stricter protective order in that case that would restrict the defense team’s handling of classified evidence.