Donald's Trump's threats on social media MIGHT finally lead to legal consequences for him. Woo hoo! Today it was revealed that in Trump's pretrial conditions in the Georgia RICO case he is forbidden from making any “direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community,” including in “posts on social media or reposts of posts” by others on social media.
Wow. It took a long time to get here, especially considering all the other times he intimidated and threatened witnesses on social media. Remember Alexander Vindman? Marie Yovanovitch, US Ambassador to Ukrainian? But now, because he's under pretrial conditions and protective orders issued by a judge in our legal system, he MIGHT be charged with witness tampering. It's one of the reasons that we needed to get him in this position. It's the difference between lying to the media and on social media to the public, vs lying in court under oath.
Keep Normalizing Jail For Trump
Every time these conditions are set I watch the cable hosts and legal analysts talk about how pretrial jailing is not going to happen. But some, like Glenn Kirschner, have said, "It's time to detain Trump pending trial." Kirschner has made some videos with the compelling reasons Trump should be put in jail. The legal experts and the media are finally starting to discuss the possibility that pretrial detention is more and more likely. Good! I'm on board the "Jail Trump" train. But before that, what else can the judge do? Last week I wrote about what happens when Trump violates his protective order or pretrial conditions.
Today I heard former Federal prosecutor Will Rollins explain to Brian Tyler Cohen that a judge can forbid Trump from posting anything on social media or require Trump to provide all his social media posts ahead of time to his defense attorneys to certify they aren't being used for witness intimidation. If they do, the attorney can lose their bar card. HA! That would be fun to see.
I like the idea of Trump physically in jail because it would stop HIM from threatening people on social media, since he won't personally be able to post on #TruthSocial, his own personal social media platform. He also won't be able to threaten people at a rally. And, unless he gets to do a jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson, there will be no live interviews.
Trump's constant use of threats works for him politically and if we can't stop them completely, we need a way to limit them. So it's great that a judge FINALLY imposed a gag order on Trump in his Georgia RICO case.
Now, when he keeps making threats, we look for ways to make it hurt him and those people who knowingly and intentionally aid and abet Trump in the commission of his witness tampering.
What's The Strategy to Beat Trump on Social Media?
Trump uses social media to talk directly to the public. It lets him set the narrative. One of his current narratives is that Biden and "big tech" is trying to limit his free speech. But threats of violence are not protected speech. We need to keep educating everyone on what is and is not protected speech.
We also need to remember that private entities can restrict what is said on their platform.
Remember how Facebook and Twitter give Trump special treatment until it was no longer possible to ignore his threats? Then he used Twitter to incite violence on January 6th. After January 6th, Twitter and Facebook banned him.
Facebook made some changes, put in some new guidelines and welcomed him back. Do you think "the temperature" has gone down? No! But he doesn't need to post directly on Facebook. He has his own social media platform. And, in addition, it's repeated on Twitter/X, Facebook and in the MSM. (Marcy Wheeler reminds us not to run his posts without breaking them up. Don't be a data mule for his messages! )
Because of the reposting TFG gets all the benefits of the big social media platforms without the possibility of restrictions. Nothing he says will be removed. But it's not as if Truth Social doesn't have Terms of Service, they do!
In Truth Social's Terms of Service it says:
"your contributions do not advocate or incite, encourage, or threaten physical harm against another. And, "your contributions do not violate any applicable law, regulation, or rule."
They have consequences for people who violate their TOS and posting threatening speech.
And before you say, "They'll never enforce any TOS on their contributors". You should know that Truth Social gave law enforcement info on the man in Utah who threatened Biden. (In fact, they acted when Meta/Facebook did not!) Truth Social alerted the FBI about a user threatening Biden and other Democrats. Facebook seemingly failed to even moderate the violent posts.
So, will they enforce their Terms of Service on Trump? They should. If they don't, this is where we look at the laws that apply to people or companies that KNOWINGLY and WILLINGLY participate in witness tampering.
You might recall how Musk fought a subpoena about turning over evidence to Jack Smith, He wanted to violate the rules of the subpoena that said NOT to tell the subject that their data was being subpoenaed. They were fined $350,000. Look, I don't want to go all Fani Willis RICO here, but we can't just let the social media companies enable Trump's crimes and the crimes of his followers.
We know that Zuckerberg kept people on Facebook who made threats because they had political connections and/or high engagement. We know that Elon Musk has replatformed and is now PAYING Nazis to post on X. If Devin Nunes, the CEO of Truth Social, is asked to remove Trump's witness tampering posts and does NOT, could that be considered aiding and abetting Trump in the commission of a crime?
There are specific laws that could compel Truth Social to remove witness tampering threats. These laws exist. Here's the law enforcement process for Truth Social. The process for Facebook/Instagram is described under Legal Removal Request.
I listened to a Twitter Space, I mean an X Space, the other day about Elon Musk's proposal to ban the block button. Some fan boys and girls talked about how it was a very very smart business decision. But other women and men talked about the very real impact of threats and harassment on the platform have on people. I heard stories of subpoenas being issued by law enforcement to remove threats of violence and the company had to comply. The non-fan boys pointed out that this wasn't "a few flamers" in the comments section with differences of opinions. They were serious, true threats to people.
Finally, when Donald Trump breaks his pretrial conditions and protective orders, by witness tampering people on social media, he will be sanctioned, up to and including jail. Then we keep fighting. Because we can't let the social media companies off the hook when they don't manage their own platform while it is being used to harm people.
Cross posted at Spocko's Brain Will Trump’s threats on social media send him to jail?
