Judge On CNN Says She ‘Was Told’ Not To Call Trump Fans His Followers: ‘Use The Word Voters’

Former Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin said she “was told” not to refer to former President Donald Trump’s fans as “followers,” but to instead “use the word voters” after a CNN segment.

On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 , Scheindlin appeared with CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig to discuss the hearing on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s motion demanding Trump be gagged from making statements like his false claims President Joe Biden tried to assassinate him with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

In passing, Scheindlin appeared to claim she was instructed not to say “followers” on the air, but instead to refer to Trump’s fans as “voters”:

COOPER: So if Cannon grants this gag order, that’d be the third gag order for the former president. Can you compare the gag order requests in this to the others?

ELIE HONIG: So the New York state trial that we just had, the gag order that was in place, was intended to protect the trial. So it was fairly specific. It said Donald Trump cannot comment publicly. Any party cannot comment publicly about the jurors, the witnesses or essentially the courtroom staff.

The order that DOJ is seeking here is different. What DOJ is asking basically is, we don’t want him making comments that could endanger law enforcement officials. And you remember a couple months ago, Trump started saying this ridiculous false theory that when DOJ searched his house, the FBI searched his house, there was some plan to potentially assassinate him. An outrageous, inflammatory statement. So DOJ’s trying to tamp that down.

COOPER: Right.

HONIG: I think Judge Cannon is a bit resistant because she says that DOJ needs to show something more specific than just generalized concern that someone might do something. And she said, we haven’t seen any specific example. I mean, if you look at Trump’s history, though, there are plenty of examples.

COOPER: Yes, I mean, Judge, there were no affidavits from particular FBI officials or anything. Do you think the judge is right to be skeptical?

SHIRA SCHEINDLIN: I do. But I think there’s a way to thread the needle here. I think that the only thing he’s saying that’s endangering anyone is they’re out to kill me. Biden’s out to assassinate me. FBI wants me dead and tried to kill me. He needs to stop saying that because I think that endangers law enforcement writ large.

He doesn’t know these FBI agents. Their names have been redacted. I’m not sure they’re in specific danger. But we’ve had incidents that based on things he said, some of his — I was told to use the word voters, not followers in the last episode, so, in the last segment.

But his voters have done bad things. They have walked into an FBI office, threatened to kill people. Somebody just got terrible hate mail, I guess it was Alvin Bragg, they would kill him. So things happen when people speak the way he’s speaking and it’s so obviously false. So I would try to thread the needle and say, these are the only two things you can’t say.

Surely you can give those two up. But you can go on. I say everything else. I’m not going to give a full blown gag order.

Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360 .