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Federal prosecutors are urging a judge to reinstate a silence order against Donald Trump, citing recent social media posts about the former president’s chief of staff that they say represented an attempt to use a foreseeable witness in the case to influence and intimidate.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the federal case accusing Trump of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, last week temporarily halted her order barring him from making inflammatory comments about prosecutors, court staff or potential witnesses. The pause came as his lawyers challenged the limited gag order in higher courts.

In a motion filed Wednesday evening, special counsel Jack Smith’s team encouraged Chutkan to reinstate the restrictions. Prosecutors cited in part Trump’s statements on social media and at a news conference last day

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about his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. ABC News reported Tuesday that Meadows was tested before a grand jury after being granted immunity from prosecution.

The former president mused on social media about the possibility that Meadows, a close White House ally who was indicted along with Trump in a separate state case in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the election, would testify against Smith in exchange for immunity.

Part of the post read: Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future of our failing nation. “I don’t think Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows?”

In their motion, Smith’s team cited the Meadows post as an example of the type of commentary the original gag order was intended to prohibit and as a reason why the restrictions should be reinstated.

Trump, prosecutors wrote, abused the court’s administrative stay to send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case, among other harmful conduct.

They added: Unless the Court lifts the administrative stay, the defendant will not stop his harmful and damaging attacks. Moreover, to the extent that defendant’s public message addressed to the Chief of Staff, knowing that it would reach him, is not already covered by his conditions of release, it is a deliberate attempt to circumvent them.

Smith’s team also asked Chutkan to change the terms of Trump’s pretrial release from prison by making compliance with the gag order a condition, or by clarifying that the existing condition prohibiting communication with witnesses about the facts of the case also includes indirect messages to witnesses made public on social media or in speeches.

In a separate case, Trump was fined $10,000 on Wednesday after the judge in his civil fraud trial in New York said the former president had violated a gag order.