Ex-DOJ Official Highlights The Real Crazy Part Of Trumps Gag Order Situation

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal  suggested the wildest element of the Donald Trump  gag order situation is that the former president needed one at all. 

Katyal noted that there’s not a great deal of precedent on the subject because “no criminal defendant in their right mind would act the way Donald Trump is.”

“The crazy part of this situation is not that a judge issued a gag order against a leading presidential candidate,” the Obama-era official said on MSNBC Monday. “The crazy part is that a leading presidential candidate has made a habit of threatening and attacking witnesses and prosecutors and court officials.”

On Monday , U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, overseeing Trump’s federal election conspiracy case, imposed a narrow gag order prohibiting the former president from making inflammatory statements about prosecutors, court staff and witnesses involved in the case. 

In a Truth Social post Monday, the former president called the ruling “unconstitutional” and claimed it means “I’m not allowed to criticize people.”

He said he plans to appeal the ruling, an effort which Katyal predicted is “going nowhere.”

Chutkan had specified that the order would not stop Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, from criticizing President Joe Biden or the Justice Department generally.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team said it requested the gag order to protect the integrity of the trial and jury pool after Trump repeatedly attacked people involved with it.

Watch Katyal’s analysis on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” below.