Dipshit Donald Trump begins attacking witnesses after Judge Chatman orders him to respond in protective order filing

| 6:14 pm EDT August 5, 2023
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Yesterday Donald Trump made a social media post which pretty clearly threatened prosecutors without naming them, prompting the DOJ to cite the post in a court filing last night seeking a protective order against Trump. Earlier today the judge ordered Trump to respond to that filing by Monday. So how did Trump take the news? He turned around and began attacking one of the witnesses in the 1/6 criminal case against him.

Trump posted this to Truth Social about Mike Pence, a key grand jury witness who will also be a key trial witness: “WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side. I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was “too honest.” He’s delusional, and now he wants to show he’s a tough guy. I once read a major magazine article on Mike. It said he was not a very good person. I was surprised, but the article was right. Sad!“

Trump’s lawyers will try to argue that he’s allowed to attack Pence on a political basis, given that they’re supposedly running against each other in the 2024 race. But Trump’s post clearly gets into Pence’s grand jury testimony, as cited in the indictment text.

So Trump is now trying to intimidate a witness and trying to unduly influence the eventual trial jury. This is so much worse for Trump than his previous, more threatening but also far more vague, post. This post appears to directly violate the conditions that the magistrate judge set upon Trump’s pretrial release.

These two social media posts alone are not going to be enough to get Trump (or any defendant) thrown in jail while awaiting trial. But it’s a good start. Judges always tend to handle these kinds of things in incremental fashion with proportional but escalating responses. Trump is steadily marching himself into a cell.

Trump is being about as stupid as someone in his position can be. So be it. At this point we won’t be surprised if the DOJ makes another filing regarding Trump’s new post about witness Pence. Trump’s pretrial antics cannot possibly help him, and can only hurt him.