Did Donald Trump Violate Bail Agreement? – Federal prosecutors are examining whether former President Donald Trump violated his bail agreement during a South Carolina campaign stop. They also want a gag order imposed on Trump.
Trump’s federal release agreement signed in June bars him from obtaining a firearm.
Trump Posed with Firearm During S.C. Campaign Stop
The former president posed holding a pistol emblazoned with his likeness and “45” on it.
Social media posts shared by the Trump campaign earlier this week showed the former president at the Palmetto State Armory, a gun store in Summerville, S.C.
Prosecutors claimed that Trump violated his release in a Friday court filing saying, “In particular, on September 25, the defendant’s campaign spokesman posted a video of the defendant in the Palmetto State Armory, a Federal Firearms Licensee in Summerville, South Carolina. The video posted by the spokesman showed the defendant holding a Glock pistol with the defendant’s likeness etched into it. The defendant stated, ‘I’ve got to buy one,’ and posed for pictures with the FFL owners. The defendant’s spokesman captioned the video Tweet with the representation that the defendant had purchased the pistol, exclaiming, ‘President Trump purchases a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!’”
Trump’s campaign later told ABC News the former president had not bought a Glock as had been proclaimed earlier on social media.
Prosecutors Demand Gag Order on Trump
Prosecutors hope to obtain a gag order against Trump to prevent the jury pool from being “tainted”; however, the argument itself is slightly irrelevant considering the degree of pre-trial publicity and that Donald Trump has been a public figure for over 40 years. Jurors in overwhelmingly Democratic Washington, D.C., certainly already have their minds made up about Trump and not in his favor. Trump has been wildly unpopular in the nation’s Capitol since before he became president.
They want Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose a gag order on Trump to stop him from insulting prosecutors or from claiming that the charges against him linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot are false or without basis.
“The defendant should not be permitted to obtain the benefits of his incendiary public statements and then avoid accountability by having others — whose messages he knows will receive markedly less attention than his own — feign retraction,” the prosecutors wrote.
Chutkan has scheduled an October 16 hearing for lawyers to debate the merits of the request.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting. He writes opinion articles from a conservative perspective.
