Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed a motion calling on Judge Aileen Cannon to impose a gag order on Donald Trump to prevent him from speaking about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in a way that could endanger FBI agents and other law enforcement officials.
Here is a link to the motion which was filed Friday night that seeks to modify the conditions of pretrial release for Trump.
The Hill wrote:
In his request, Smith asked the court to impose a condition that would bar Trump from making public statements that could “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
“Whether a particular statement meets that test “must be determined by reference to the statement’s full context,” the filing reads. “But that condition would clearly prohibit further statements deceptively claiming that the agents involved in the execution of the search warrant were engaged in an effort to kill him, his family, or Secret Service agents.”
The move comes after the former president falsely claimed in an email Wednesday that President Joe Biden was “locked & loaded and ready to take me out” — twisting language from the terms approved for law enforcement as they prepared to search his Mar-a-Lago residence for classified records in 2022.
The FBI executed a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, as part of a criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of highly classified documents.
The search warrant itself became public earlier this week. It contained standard language found in search warrants that federal agents were authorized to use deadly force if occupants of the premise use deadly force against them first.
But Trump and his MAGA acolytes turned this into a conspiracy where Biden was plotting to assassinate the former president. They blatantly disregarded the facts that the search was coordinated with members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and that the former president was not at Mar-a-Lago when the search was conducted,
In a post on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote:
“WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.
NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”
The assassination conspiracy theory was then amplified and widely disseminated by MAGA politicians and right-wing media outlets. For example, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Attorney General Merrick Garland should be impeached for plotting to assassinate Trump.
“Merrick Garland basically issued a kill order for President Trump,” she said.
At a Thursday news conference, the usually cautious Garland took the rare step of publicly refuting a claim made by Trump.
“That allegation is false, and it is extremely dangerous,” said Garland, who personally approve the Mar-a-Lago search.
“The document that is being referred to in the allegation is the Justice Department’s standard policy limiting the use of force,” Garland added. “As the FBI advises, it is part of a standard operations plan for searches and, in fact, it was even used in the consensual search (for classified documents) of President Biden’s home.”
In their gag order motion, Smith’s team said Trump’s false claims could expose law enforcement officers to threats of violence or harassment.
“The Government’s request is necessary because of 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,” the motions read.
“Those statements create a grossly misleading impression about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents — falsely suggesting that they were complicit in a plot to assassinate him — and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment,” prosecutors added.
Trump is facing 40 separate charges of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s retrieval of the records after leaving the White House. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Trump’s trial was originally scheduled to begin on May 20. But Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge, has indefinitely postponed the trial. It won’t be until late July that she will hold hearings to resolve issues related to how the classified documents would be handled at the trial.
And now it’s up to Cannon to decide whether to approve Smith’s motion for a gag order on Trump to protect law enforcement officers.
MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann, the former top prosecutor on former special counsel Robert Mueller's team, posted this on X;
Smart move by Smith as Judge Cannon won't be likely to grant the gag order, will show her patent bias, and Smith can then appeal to the 11th Circuit.
"Smart move by Smith as Judge Cannon won't be likely to grant the gag order, will show her patent bias, and Smith can then appeal to the 11th Circuit," he said Friday.
Conservative attorney George Conway, a staunch Never Trumper, said on CNN that if Cannon fails to act on Smith’s gag order motion it could provide the special counsel with an opportunity to have her recused from the case.
Huffpost cited Roger Parloff, a senior editor at Lawfare, who noted that Smith’s new motion, seeking to halt Trump’s recent lies about an assassination attempt, "is crafted to highlight Judge Cannon's bias and hypocrisy if she fails to take action."
"The motion twice cites Cannon's order 'ECF 101' in which she, on her own, invoked her 'independent obligation to protect the integrity of this judicial proceeding' in order to probe a dubious defense allegation of a prosecutor's ethical breach," according to Parloff. "Jack's new motion challenges Cannon to act on Trump's outlandish attacks on the FBI--which have already triggered an armed attack on an FBI office in Cincinnati--with a fraction of her solicitude for policing special counsel's ethics."
On Aug. 11, 2022, just days after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle was believed by authorities to have tried to break into the FBI’s Cincinnati field office. The man fled the scene and was killed by Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers after a vehicle chase and hours-long armed standoff.
An account bearing the man’s name on Trump’s Truth Social platform acknowledged the attempted attack on the FBI office. Immediately after the Mar-a-Lago search, the man wrote: “People, this is it. I hope a call to arms comes from someone better qualified, but if not, this is your call to arms from me.”
And here is a thread on X about Smith’s gag order motion.