If Donald Trump wasn't Donald Trump, he'd already be clinking a tin cup across a jail's iron bars.
That's essentially conservative attorney and co-founder of the anti-Trump "Lincoln Project" super PAC George Conway's take on the remarkable latitude the former president has been granted in his apparent nose-thumbing at the "witch hunt" and "election interference" trials against him.
"I think if he had been any other defendant, let alone, one with such a megaphone, and let alone with such a track record, let alone, a convicted felon — I think he might already be in jail," Conway said during an appearance on CNN's "Out Front" with Erin Burnett.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon held a hearing in her Fort Pierce, Florida, court to consider whether to restrict the 45th president's speech by asking for more proof from special counsel Jack Smith to show that his rhetoric actually inspired threats.
"I think it's disturbing in that the defendent here, a criminal, a convict actually went out and made statements that were so inflammatory — they presented a danger to FBI agents," said Conway, adding "there are very compelling cases in which the court should consider fashioning some kind of an order designed to restrict his ability to make statements."
Special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors are attempting to put conditions on Trump’s freedom pending trial that involve restricting potent language that could put FBI agents in harm's way.
Prosecutors urged Cannon to impose a gag order after Trump falsely claimed that President Joe Biden had put his life in jeopardy after the Justice Department authorized agents to use deadly force while searching Mar-a-Lago if they encountered a life-threatening danger.
Trump falsely claimed last month that the FBI was prepared to kill him when it searched his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, for classified documents two years ago.
On his TruthSocial account, Trump said the FBI was “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger” and that the Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE."
Trump, along with his longtime valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira all pleaded not guilty to charges of obstructing the government's attempts to retrieve the hoarded classified documents.
The boilerplate language granting authorization of deadly force in such searches has already proven to be standard procedure; and the FBI used the precise same language when they searched President Joe Biden's properties for his own cache of classified documents.
During Monday's hearing, Cannon posed to prosecutors how she could put a gag order in place that doesn't neuter the former president's freedom of speech.
Conway thinks there isn't much to mull.
"So it's really, really hard to understand her skepticism here," he said. "I understand it can be difficult to draft these orders and to make them clear and make them consistent with the First Amendment."
Watch the clip below or at this link.
