FYI: The panel is Judges Patricia Millett (Obama), Cornelia Pillard (Obama), and Brad Garcia (Biden), and it's not going well for Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer.
Ooooof. Sauer: "I cannot think of a violation that would not violate the law."
Sauer is basically saying that there is no gag order that could issue aside from criminal law violations.
Millett is OVER Sauer.
Garcia is extremely skeptical.
Pillard is thinking about the opinion (and SCOTUS?).
Sauer is (1) not answering questions and (2) interrupting the judges repeatedly.
All is going well.
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Pillard says to Sauer that his argument seems to be that there is "no work that the interest in a fair trial could permissibly do" to allow a gag order before harm comes to the trial.
Circling back: Cecil VanDevender, for the special counsel, primarily faced questions about the First Amendment implications of the gag order and its scope when it comes to the court staff and prosecutors, but also some questions about the part of the order relating to witnesses.
I'm a simple Canadian lawyer, but I'm shocked by how terrible Sauer is. I mean, I'm not sure he has much to work with, but it seems impossible to me that he didn't anticipate these questions and had some response in mind beyond deflection and non-answers.
Of course Trump wants to harm the trial proceedings, he said "if you come after me, I will come after you" so of course they are arguing you cannot order gag order until they actually ruin the trial or someone has violence against them
He speaks so fast I had to slow the audio to 0.75, then the judge's speech comes out sooo deliberate. Like she's speaking to him like he's a child. I'm enjoying it too much.
Millett & Pillard's nominations by Obama - without doubt, deserved ones - were the ones McConnell decided to block to pick the fight over filibustering judicial nominees. It became a lame excuse for him to kill it for SCOTUS nominations, but had Reid backed down, the Trump-judge pool would be worse.
