Donald Trump, who is currently under gag orders in at least one of his criminal and one of his civil proceedings, just shifted from merely verbally attacking the judge and attorney general in the civil case to calling for action against them.
On TruthSocial, he issued an explicit and direct call for a citizen’s arrest of both individuals.
This may have been the former president’s most explicit call to action since January 6th.
The post was originally from another TruthSocial user, going by the screenname VonRitter.
The basic difference, though, is that this account has a reach of under 2k users, while Trump’s repost of the message reaches more than 6 million — and, of course, Trump has a following who have shown a propensity to do whatever they believe he wants.
The post calls for a citizen’s arrest of Judge Arthur Engoron and Attorney General Letitia James, who are handling Trump’s civil case for financial fraud.
In that case, his gag order only limits what he can say about the judge’s staff, leaving him free to verbally attack Engoron and James.
At the same time, however, he’s appealing a stricter gag order in another case, and this may damage his claim that he’s just using free speech to express political views.
The post read (spelling intact, though the original was in all caps):
“I would like to see Lititia James and Judge Engoron placed under citizens arrest for blatant election interference and harassment.”
You’ll see Trump’s share of the post below.
Trump is raging after his son, Donald Trump Jr., headed to court for a second time on Monday, this time to testify for the defense. He’s previously demanded that his (adult) children (two of whom are defendants in the case as well) be left out of the proceedings.
Trump has already been fined twice for continued attacks on Judge Engoron’s clerk after the gag order was issued.
As for citizen’s arrests, while the procedure does exist in New York law, to be done legally it must fall under specific circumstances, including that the offense must be committed in the presence of the person doing the arresting.
Of course, there’s also a legal process for contesting an election and it doesn’t involve an armed mob breaking into the Capitol Building.
Here’s what Trump shared to his fans:
