Special counsel wants an order from the court to limit Trump’s false statements about the FBI
Following the news that Trump said FBI agents received special instructions for using the use of deadly force and other deadly force, Special lawyer Jack Smith wants a court order that limits Trump’s comments to the media.
By Devlin Barrett
May 25, 2024 01:52 AM
Special counsel Jack Smith filed court papers Friday asking a judge to order Donald Trump not to make any further incendiary claims suggesting that FBI agents were “complicit in a plot to assassinate him.”
In the complaint for U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, Smith argues Trump’s statements earlier this week have exposed FBI agents involved in the matter “to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment.”
The announcement comes after a turbulent week of the ex-president’s extensive legal disputes. He’s preparing to present closing arguments on Tuesday in the case before the court in New York, and has been making incendiary statements regarding the genesis of the charges against him in Florida in connection with allegedly mishandling classified documents and blocking the government’s efforts to recover the documents.
The latest filing demonstrates the severity of the anxiety within Federal law enforcement that someone might get inspired by Trump’s rhetoric and use it against FBI as well as Justice Department personnel.
The late Friday filing was in response to a range of comments from Trump as well as his campaign such as an appeal to raise money that shouted “Biden’s DOJ was authorized to shoot me!”
The assertion made of Trump as well as his sympathizers that FBI agents scoured Trump’s house in 2022, with a explicit authorization to use deadly force an assertion based on the disclosure in court documents earlier this week that FBI utilized an official FBI document during the raid of Mar-a-Lago. The document provides the long-standing FBI guidelines; similar to cops, FBI agents are essentially always permitted to use the use of deadly force only if it is legal and appropriate as long as they are operating within their home country of the United States.
Brad Searcy Photography via AP
Trump and his backers seized upon some of the papers regarding the August 2022 raid at Mar-a-Lago for documents classified to assert that government agents were planning to use deadly force against Trump.
People who are familiar with the investigation previously stated to The Washington Post that the FBI deliberately made the decision to conduct their search during a time that Trump wasn’t present and certain aspects of their plan included a need to avoid confrontation or miscommunication with the Secret Service agents who were responsible for securing his residence. The people who spoke to us were on the conditions of anonymity to talk about the internal discussions.
Trump and a few people who support him, such as Trump and some of his supporters, includingright-wing audiojournalist Stephen K. Bannon, have attempted to portray the search like an aspirational plan to assassinate the president.
“It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago,” Trump declared in a fundraising call this week. “You know that they’re just itching to do the unthinkable.”
In the lawsuit, Smith asks Cannon “to make clear that [Trump] may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case,” adding that a caution from the court is required due to “several intentionally false and inflammatory statements recently made by Trump that distort the circumstances under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned and executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.”
Smith’s report states that the prosecutors reached out to Trump’s lawyers, but that his lawyer “do not believe that there is any imminent danger, and asked to meet and confer next Monday.”
In the midst of four indictments and a trial before a jury in New York, Trump has been the subject of several court orders that limit his public statements because of false accusations he’s made against court employees and relatives of court officials witnesses, and other people connected to his trial.
Smith’s request for a gag order does not specifically seek a gag order, however the kind of warning that he refers to would fulfill the same purpose.
“A restriction prohibiting future similar statements does not restrict legitimate speech,” the special counsel wrote. “Trump’s conditions of release should therefore be modified to prohibit similar communications going forward.”
