Jonathan Turley, a legal expert and professor of constitutional law, deconstructed special counsel Jack Smith due to the latter’s most recent attempt to at least partially gag former President Donald Trump.
Smith has attempted to stop the former president from discussing — and criticising — the indictments ever since he filed federal charges against him for allegedly handling secret materials improperly and for his claimed part in ‘inciting’ the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Requesting a “narrowly tailored” gag order from D.C. to stop Trump from making what Smith described as “disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.”
Smith is not working alone, though, to quiet Trump. In his filing, the defendant also stated that “a supplemental order that extends some of the prohibitions that apply to defence counsel to the defendant himself is particularly warranted.”
The filing stated that “shortly after the indictment in this case was unsealed,” the defendant’s lead attorney “started a series of lengthy and detailed interviews in which he potentially tainted the jury pool by disseminating information and opinions about the case and a potential witness and described in detail legal defences that he plans to mount, including defences that may never be raised in court or that may be rejected by the Court before ever reaching the jury.”
In a column published after Smith’s filing, Turley, a law school professor at George Washington University, wrote that there was a new addition to the late President Ronald Regan’s “nine most terrifying words in the English language.” (“I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”)
We can add nine more after Friday night: “a narrowly tailored order that imposes modest, allowable restrictions,” he wrote.
The Smith motion is far from being ‘narrowly tailored.’ In fact, short of a mobile ‘Get Smart’ Cone of Silence, it is unsettling to imagine what Smith thought to be the better choice, Turley continued, alluding to a spy comedy from the 1960s starring Don Adams.