Roger Stone (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM)

Continuing his fight to use social media as a way to attack the criminal case against him and the Mueller-Russia investigation, Roger Stone on Friday lodged a 30-page mandamus petition in an attempt to get out from under multiple federal district court orders restricting his and his family’s social media speech.

Stone, who faces charges of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to congressional investigators, filed his mandamus petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in an attempt to overcome the increasingly wide-ranging social media restriction orders imposed on him by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in his criminal case.

In July, Jackson ordered Stone, a former Trump adviser and longtime ally of the president’s, off of major social media platforms completely. Jackson said that he had violated a previous, more tailored order from February when he launched public attacks against the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and other officials linked to the Russia investigation that helped lead to Stone’s criminal indictment.

Reportedly, in deciding to now disallow Stone from communicating on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook in any way, the frustrated judge said, “I am wrestling with behavior that has more to do with middle school than a court of law.” She reportedly added, “Whether the problem is that you can’t follow simple orders or you won’t, I need to help you out.”

A day later, Jackson went a step further, issuing an order that said Stone also cannot comment publicly on his case “indirectly” by having surrogates, family members or other representatives make social media statements about it.

Stone and his attorney, Bruce Rogow, fired back in the petition filed late in the day Friday, pointing directly to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment in making two central arguments: one, that Jackson’s order expanding the prohibition against Stone from using any major social media amounts to a prior restraint on his First Amendment rights; and two, that the prohibitions on his family members constitute a chilling effect on their exercise of First Amendment rights.

The petition seeks to have the court of appeals vacate all the restriction orders affecting Stone and/or his family.

“Like all court orders that actually forbid speech activities, gag orders are prior restraints,” Rogow wrote. “In addition,” he said, “the gag orders are content based—limiting the topics open for discussion and ideas or messages which can be expressed—creating another presumption of unconstitutionality.”

Stone and Rogow also argued that the orders fail strict constitutional scrutiny, as “no compelling interest justifies prohibiting, inter alia, Roger Stone from ‘post[ing] or communicat[ing] on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook in any way on any subject,’” as Rogow quoted Jackson’s July 16 order.

They further contended that there was no compelling interest in “chilling the speech of his family members.”

“The irony of the recent total speech ban on Stone and his family members is that he, and they, are forced ‘into a posture of passivity at a time when they have every right to be outspoken,’” Rogow wrote, quoting Murphy-Brown, 907 F.3d at 798, “especially when Stone has been the subject of thousands of articles relating to his prosecution.”

Stone and Rogow also contended that Jackson “pointed to no evidence, no reason, no likelihood that ‘publicity, unchecked, would so distort the views of potential jurors that [enough] could not be found who would, under proper instructions, fulfill their sworn duty to render a just verdict exclusively on the evidence presented in open court,” quoting Nebraska Press Ass’n v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 569 (1976).

Rogow said Friday he would not comment on the petition.

Justice Department representatives couldn’t be immediately reached for comment Friday evening.