Can Trump follow court-imposed social media rules?

Former President Donald Trump announced this week that he plans to turn himself in at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday, where he will be booked and processed for allegedly working to subvert Georgia's 2020 presidential election results. Unsurprisingly, the announcement came on Trump's Truth Social platform, which has become the former president's primary outlet for statements and updates since his Twitter and Facebook accounts were suspended in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. And like his previous social media accounts, it has also become a significant legal liability for Trump as he faces his historic slate of federal and state criminal indictments.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan warned the former president to take "special care" not to make "inflammatory statements" that might taint the jury pool for his upcoming federal trial on election interference, while this week Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee went a step further, signing an order that bars Trump from intimidating "any person known to him or her to be a codefendant or witness in this case," including "posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media."

For Trump, who has been known to fire off dozens of incendiary social media posts a day, McAfee's order may seem like a uniquely onerous hurdle in the midst of a busy campaign-cum-trial season. Will the former president be able to abide by his new court-mandated social media rules? And could there be an upside for him if he chooses not to?

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What the commentators said

Trump has previously "faced scrutiny" for his Truth Social posts, stated Newsweek, including "accusations of witness tampering" for telling Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan not to testify to the Fulton County grand jury. Nevertheless, the Georgia restrictions are "perhaps the harshest yet in the former president's four indictments."

Given Trump's history of inflammatory statements regarding his many legal challenges over the years, attorneys who spoke with The New York Times suggested that if Trump were an "ordinary citizen issuing these attacks, he would be in jail by now." It remains to be seen, however, whether Trump will "face consequences for this kind of behavior ahead of a trial." In regards to his statements pertaining to the federal election interference trial being overseen by Chutkan, Trump's public statements are "walking the line," Duke Law Professor Samuel Buell told the Times. He is "always continuing to push the envelope" even if he has yet to fully cross a legal threshold to force accountability.

While the threat of jail for violating a court order is usually enough to force compliance from someone on trial, Trump is a "different kind of defendant," The Washington Post reported, even if "lawyers generally agree that [he] should get no special treatment. Moreover, the Post's Aaron Blake explained in a column published earlier this month, it is "difficult to prove witness tampering," particularly with Trump as an active candidate for office. In the case of posts about former Vice President Mike Pence, the line between "defending himself politically from charges leveled by an opponent in the 2024 presidential campaign" and attempting to "influence that opponent's potential testimony against him in a criminal case" is a nebulous one to define.

What next?

The various judicial warnings and restrictions over Trump's social media rhetoric might ultimately "play into his hands," according to The Washington Post. Rather than actually preventing him from making inflammatory remarks, it could spark a "legal fight over free speech that he has already signaled he wants." Trump's attorneys had previously argued that efforts by Special Council Jack Smith's team to limit what the former president can share about his election interference case amounted to seeking to "restrict First Amendment rights" and that his allegedly criminal behavior in general was an expression of those same rights.

It's a "win-win" situation for Trump, University of Michigan Law Professor and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade told the Post. "If he is not gagged and jailed, he can disparage prosecutors and witnesses with impunity. If he is jailed, he can portray himself as a victim of persecution."