Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a gag order in the case of classified documents, and also find the federal prosecutors who wrote the request in contempt.
Smith’s office has asked Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge presiding over the case involving classified documents, to impose a gag order on the former president, restricting his capacity to discuss in public the details of the law enforcement raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022.
The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has falsely and repeatedly attacked the FBI for having a policy against using lethal force during the search, as the agency does with each and every warrant it executes.
Attorneys for Trump attacked the gag order request as an “extraordinary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional censorship application” to stifle Trump’s speech in his presidential campaign in a scathing court filing that was submitted late on Memorial Day.
“Improperly asking the Court to impose an unconstitutional gag order on President Trump,” is how the special counsel puts it.
based on vague and unsupported assertions about threats to law enforcement personnel whose names have been redacted from public filings and whose identities are already subject to a protective order,” wrote defense attorneys.
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The lawyers also said what prosecutors referred to as “self-appointed thought police” were “seeking to condition President Trump’s freedom to comply” with his own views.
Smith’s request to include the gag order in the former president’s pre-trial release conditions—which would have required a probation officer, not a judge, to determine whether Trump’s remarks violated the agreement—was one of the aspects of the proposed order that Trump’s attorneys contested the most.
That structure would “require the Probation Office and the Court to mediate disputes against a backdrop of potentially imprisoning a political opponent who is successfully defeating Smith’s boss and preferred candidate,” they wrote.
Donald Trump’s team said, in addition to not granting the gag order request, Cannon should sanction “all government lawyers who participated in the decision to file the motion.”
In addition, the former president is under a gag order in his ongoing hush money trial in New York state court and in the federal election interference case in Washington, DC.
Five law enforcement officials, some of whom may testify in the case involving the classified documents, were put in jeopardy by Trump’s false claims, according to the special counsel on Friday.
Prosecutors said his comments, “invite the sort of threats and harassment that have occurred when other participants in legal proceedings against Trump have been targeted by his invective.”
The FBI and Attorney General Merrick Garland have rejected allegations that the operation to search Mar-a-Lago was somehow planned differently and that former President Trump’s life was in danger.
The FBI said in a statement that “no one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.” but Garland last week called the allegation “false” and “extremely dangerous.”
Garland and the FBI reported that the same lethal force policy was included in plans in a separate investigation into the handling of classified documents, prior to the search of President Joe Biden’s Delaware home.