CNN’s Jim Acosta Says Jack Smith Smackdown Over Threat Shows ‘He’s Going To Ride Trump Pretty Hard’ On Social Media Posts

CNN anchor Jim Acosta said Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for a protective order signals he is not going to tolerate threatening language from ex-President Donald Trump on social media.

News broke Friday night that Smith reacted to a Trump  Truth social post — which said “If you go after me, I’m coming after you” — by filing a request for a protective order, arguing Trump posts could have a chilling effect on witnesses.

The Trump campaign later defended the post and denied it was intended as a threat.

On Friday night’s edition of CNN Tonight, Acosta broke the news, and spoke to CNN Contributor and former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean about what Smith’s response means:

JIM ACOSTA: Good evening. I’m Jim Acosta. Thanks for joining me tonight. Our breaking news this hour, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is reacting to this threat from former President Donald Trump on Truth Social today. It says it right there, quote, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.”

Now, the special prosecutor is asking for a protective order, saying if Trump began posting details from grand jury transcripts, it could have a chilling effect on witnesses. Remember, this is just 24 hours after his arrest and arraignment in his third indictment over election interference and after the judge warned him against making threats.

Let’s go straight to John Dean. He’s a former Nixon White House counsel. John, you and I have spoken about this, Donald Trump so many times. But, you know, as I was discussing with one of our producers before this program got started, in the past, you know, we would talk about Donald Trump’s tweets and his social media posts and wonder what the impact might be.

But it sounds as though the special counsel in this case, Jack Smith, is really seizing on this very inflammatory, threatening-sounding post from Donald Trump on Truth Social and alerting it to the judge. The government arguing that the restrictions that they’re seeking are necessary to prevent Trump from publicly disclosing sensitive discovery information. Can you walk us through what this means?

JOHN DEAN: Yeah, it looks like the post from Trump came out while they were working on a motion to agree upon a protective order in general to exchange discovery material, and this obviously caught their attention. This is not the sort of norm that they’re used to dealing with.

But we also all know, after watching Trump for many, many years now in court proceedings, particularly those where he’s a target, uh, that he likes to play the bad boy, he likes to threaten, he likes to control witnesses, he likes to tell prosecutors — call them nasty names.

And Jack Smith is going to call out to the judge’s attention and see if they can get some restrictions. They can’t zip him up, but they are going to make sure that all those documents that he gets are in the hands of his lawyers, and his lawyers are responsible and not going to let him have them other than to prepare his defense.

ACOSTA: And Trump has been accustomed to saying and blasting out on social media whatever he wants. For example, it will be wild on January 6th. We all remember that one. Is this a message from the special counsel that that is not going to be tolerated or that he is going to ride Trump pretty hard on these social media posts from here on forward?

I mean, after all, John, Trump is doing this one day after he was arraigned in Washington, in federal court, on arguably the most serious charges he has ever faced.

DEAN: This is a serious case. It’s probably the most serious case that the federal judicial system has handled in centuries, if you will. So, uh, his playing fast and loose is not smart. It could actually be to his benefit for the special counsel to ride on him, and I think that’s what this indicates, that he’s going to have a low tolerance for games, and this is a signal. We’ll see how the judge reacts to it and, you know, she may or may not do anything at this point.

I think that most important is to get the discovery material in the hands of Trump’s defense counsel so they don’t have any way to stall a trial. It appears that there have been an exchange of drafts and they couldn’t agree upon anything, so they’re going right to the court to get that resolved.

ACOSTA: And is the Department of Justice right in seeking this protective order, that Trump could have a chilling effect by posting these sorts of things?

DEAN: Well, what you want to do is have a fair trial, both for the defendant and for the American public. And the way to distort the fair trial is to put out inflammatory statements to create chaos and a circus, and I don’t think this judge or this prosecutor are going to tolerate that. But we’ll not know until the judge reacts to these filings.

Watch above via CNN Tonight.

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