Special Counsel Jack Smith's efforts to gag Donald Trump is a major trigger for this author. I've been a federal defendant in the past and have had my First Amendment rights trampled on in the name of protecting judicial proceedings. The same was true when I was a plaintiff in federal court. I sincerely hope that defendant Donald Trump sticks to his guns and doesn't let some lame in a robe tell him what to say.
In my cases I wanted to use the proceedings to boost my own profile and promote websites of mine. The goal being to hopefully make prosecuting me for the purpose of harming those websites have the opposite effect by boosting the sites. That would have been the case had I not been denied pretrial release and my own people hadn't stabbed me in the back. Despite this I was eventually able to use my last case to promote this website in direct defiance of court orders. The orders at the time were that as a pretrial confinement condition I couldn't have anything to do with this website. My response was to keep running it from detention. Eventually I got time served and was allowed to run the site while on supervised release.
Donald Trump seems to be doing what I was trying to do all along. He is doing a brilliant job of it so far. I frequently point out his successes to my own people as what they should have been doing back when I told them to do the same things. The First Amendment protects the right of defendants in criminal cases to speak publicly against those prosecuting them including prosecutors, judges, and snitches. Even if that speech is intended to deter others from pursuing them in court by publicly humiliating the other side that speech is protected by the First Amendment as long as it is not a true threat of bodily harm.
Victimhood culture has become an epidemic in recent years which puts everyone's right to free speech at risk the second they're charged with a crime. Suddenly people you could speak out against as much as you'd like are in a position where they can ask a judge to silence you just because a grand jury found cause to charge you with a crime. Prosecutors then argue that your speech must be silenced to protect the "victim" from feeling intimidated. As a result, people are forced to choose between exposing the truth and staying out of jail. A more clear violation of the Constitution is hard to find. In my first case that was the entire objective. Someone stalked me until I responded with a death threat and I was locked up as a means of shutting me up. Then I was banned from operating that business while on supervision because had my directions from jail been followed I would have had the upper hand the entire time. They would have gotten a conviction but to accomplish their primary objective they would have had to compromise. They could have still issued orders but they would not have accomplished much. At the end of the day people would have viewed my case as an example of someone not to pursue charges against but instead the opposite became the case for a little while.
Bad for Victims
This type of censorship typically has the most adverse impact on defendants but it can also be bad for victims. When I successfully sued the federal government for using excessive force on me at USP Victorville, I was banned from uploading video evidence on the grounds that any footage showing the inside of a federal prison was a security risk. The footage clearly showed me being perfectly fine, guards blocking the cameras, and me emerging injured.
Conclusion
If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen! Nobody is required to turn down the heat so that you feel comfortable staying in the kitchen. The same is true of criminal cases. If you don't want to worry about the person you snitch on humiliating you in response keep your mouth shut. Cases such as this one might create some bad law for the time being just to perpetuate the illusion of everyone being required to save their arguments for court but eventually higher courts will get things right or people will realize the government has become overbearing to the point of losing any claim of legitimacy and replace it.