Certainly a gag order on a Presidential candidate is a violation of constitutional rights...

Both McCarthy and Turley have argued that the gag order should be lifted on appeal.

The Judge in this case pretends that either Donald Trump is not running for President or that it doesn't matter that Trump is running for President.

At issue is the fact that Trump is actually running for President and at the core of this the fact that Trump should enjoy fundamental constitutional rights as both a Presidential Candidate as well as the accused.

So we can start with the concept that Trump is fundamentally protected by the first amendment. He is allowed to campaign as a Presidential candidate. In fact, there may be no more fundamental situation where the First Amendment would apply. Trump has the constitutional right to campaign. Not on just the issues that the left wing establishment would like him to campaign on, but anything and everything he feels necessary.

Furthermore, there are protections under the bill of rights that allow Donald Trump to confront his accusers as well as the eight amendment rights to not have excessive or unusual bails, fines, or punishments. By imposing a "gag order" that does not allow Trump to confront or criticize those associated with the charges and trial (including to some degree his Political opponent) the judge is elevating what amounts to "made up rights" of the prosecutor over the very real constitutional rights of the accused. If this is not "unusual" or "excessive" or simply arbitrary, I don't know what it is. Jack Smith has no constitutional right to not be criticized.

Like it or not, half of the amendments known as the bill of rights deal with protection of the accused against any potential tyranny from the state. In other words, there is nothing in the Bill of Rights or Constitution that provides any prosecution with "rights" to things like a "speedy trial" or any right to "not be publicly criticized". The right to a speedy trial (or the right to adequately prepare for a trial) is provided to the defendant, at least according to that pesky constitution.

So how does one weigh the constitutional rights of a Presidential Candidate and accused against the rights of a prosecutor to give himself an upper hand in his prosecution? We obviously have never been down this road before, but when there exists an actual known and fairly simple solution to all of this, then shouldn't the courts take it? There is no "good" reason why any of these trials should be held while a Presidential candidate is literally running for President. New York is actively running a civil trial and has a criminal trial pending for issues that took place prior to Trump even being President the first time. There is literally no reason why these trials had to happen while he was running for President. Likewise, the state of Georgia and the DOJ both waited well over two years to go after the former President for issues that most legal experts do not believe are even crimes. They created the timing to put the trials exactly smack dab in middle of Trump's Presidential campaign.

If there is an actual good reason why these trials cannot wait till after next November, nobody has provided it to me. There is no argument that Trump needs to be treated like anyone else, when there is every bit of evidence to suggest that the prosecutors across the board have singled him out and explicitly treated him differently than anyone else. You cannot have it both ways.

Show me how long it took to try the last person who was accused under Rico laws of a criminal conspiracy to have an election result legally overturned. Or how long it took for the last person accused of defrauding the United States because they complained that an election result was incorrect to see the courtroom. Or how long it took to see a trial for the last person accused of criminally paying an attorney's bill? How about how long it took Obama to go to trial for taking classified documents from the White House and putting them in a warehouse in Chicago or any other President who left the White House with classified documents.

The answer is that nobody has ever been charged with these types of charges. To have a Presidential candidate accused of even one "unprecedented" charge leading into an election would be seen under any normal times as blatant election interference. Especially when the political opponent is the sitting President and has his Attorney General call for a special prosecutor to find something to charge his opponent with. But to see four criminal cases that are all unprecedented, as well as an unprecedented civil case, all brought forth within weeks of each other, all timed to be tried back to back to back to back as a candidate runs for President is mindbogglingly simple election interference. To pretend otherwise is to pretend that you have no critical thinking ability.

Now they want to "gag" him under court order not to complain?