Donald Trump has been hit with gag orders in multiple courtrooms due to his inability to stop disparaging people involved with his cases. His lawyers have been issued similar orders for similar behavior. And now at least one of Trump’s co-defendants is begging to face similar consequences—or worse.
Trevian Kutti (she of the Jokerfied mugshot above) is one of the 19 co-defendants in the Georgia RICO case centered on alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election results in the state. Kutti has been charged with intimidating an election worker, among other things. As Reuters wrote in December 2021:
Weeks after the 2020 election, a Chicago publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West traveled to the suburban home of Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker who was facing death threats after being falsely accused by former President Donald Trump of manipulating votes. The publicist knocked on the door and offered to help.
The visitor, Trevian Kutti, gave her name but didn’t say she worked for West, a longtime billionaire friend of Trump. She said she was sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.
Last week, Kutti, who is currently out on bond, took to Instagram Live to ask for donations to help with her legal fight—while potentially exacerbating that fight in the process.
Kutti offered to answer questions during the stream but noted that she couldn’t talk about the “details of the case” due to the terms of her bond. But apparently, she didn’t think threatening to destroy the life of a witness was a violation of those terms.
In proclaiming her innocence to her followers, Kutti said with increasing anger: “As a matter of fact, there’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows this whole thing is a lie. Who knows I never did anything to her. Who knows I never. Who knows she begged me for help. There’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows that I’m going to fuck her whole life up when this is done.”
Kutti is presumably talking about Ruby Freeman, the election worker at the center of Kutti’s charges. Threatening to “fuck her whole life up when this is done” is a pretty cut-and-dry instance of witness intimidation. At the very least, it seems like she would have to be hit with a gag order similar to Trump’s, barring her from using this kind of rhetoric.
But also, a gag order would be generous, as it serves as a kind of warning—a warning which Kutti is not necessarily entitled to because she was already instructed not to do this exact thing.
As the news outlet Meidas Touch notes, “Kutti’s bond agreement bars her from intimidating acts against codefendants and witnesses, obstructing justice, posting about the case on Instagram or other social media platforms.” Violating her bond could cause her to lose the money she put up ($7,500 in this case) and to be forced to await trial from jail.
Whether Kutti or anyone involved in this case will face actual consequences for their actions, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But here’s hoping.
(via Meidas Touch, featured image: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via Getty Images)
Published: Dec 4, 2023 03:12 pm