"It’s a really hard argument in normal circumstances to say the government, who is prosecuting someone, can shut them up from defending themselves in public."

"What makes this backward from everything else is that normally, in every criminal prosecution I can think of, the power imbalance is that the state has all the power and the defendant has none. But in this case, you have a defendant who has very significant power."

Says lawprof Margaret C. Tarkington, quoted in "Push to Gag Trump Pits Free Speech Against Risk of Violence/By putting threats to the judge and prosecutors at the heart of its argument to limit the former president’s statements about the election case, the Justice Department raised issues with little precedent" (NYT)

In a 1991 case, the Supreme Court upheld barring defense lawyers from making comments outside court that are likely to prejudice a jury, citing “the state’s interest in fair trials.”

But the Supreme Court also suggested that greater speech restrictions might be permissible on lawyers because they are officers of the court. It has never addressed what standard a gag order on a defendant must meet. A handful of appeals courts have addressed gag orders imposed on defendants and set different standards....

The article quotes lawprof Paul F. Rothstein: "Everything about these cases is making new law because there are so many gaps in the law. The system is held together by people doing the right thing according to tradition, and Trump doesn’t — he jumps into every gap."