Donald Trump’s supporters unleashed a wave of death threats and antisemitic and homophobic messages to the judge overseeing his fraud trial, as well as his chief clerk, according to a state court filing this week.
A filing to support New York Justice Arthur Engoron’s opposition to a freeze on a gag order in the case includes a statement from the court’s top security official, who has collected “hundreds of threats, disparaging and harassing comments and antisemitic messages” that followed the former president’s harassment.
Federal prosecutors – who are seeking a separate gag order – shared those threats with the federal appeals court judges who will decide whether Mr Trump should be gagged in his election interference case.
But on Friday, the former president’s attorneys dismissed those threats as “irrelevant”.
There is possibly a reasonable argument in there. The gag order prohibited Trump from targeting people, not others.
However this should (hopefully) fall flat against the raw numbers that have been presented: 3rd party threats went up each time Trump and/or his lawyers said something malicious, and they went down after the gag order was put in place.
I think the “I didn’t do anything, they did” is their argument in the January 6th trial too.
Yeah, and judges have already rejected that argument when it came to dismissing the case.