Former President Donald Trump looks on before his trial begins in Manhattan Criminal Court during his trial in New York, May 20, 2024.
Mark Peterson | via Reuters
Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida asked a federal judge Friday to block the former president from making public comments that he said pose a “serious, imminent and foreseeable risk to law enforcement” investigating and prosecuting the case.
request for U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case, said this week that the former president falsely claimed in a Truth Social post that the Biden administration “authorized the FBI to use deadly force” in the 2022 Mara search. This is according to what was claimed. -Lago for confidential documents. The Trump campaign also claimed in a fundraising email that President Joe Biden was “ready to take me out” during a search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents.
Prosecutors from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office said in court papers that the agents acted “in an appropriate and professional manner consistent with the Department of Justice’s standard use-of-force policy” and argued that Trump’s claims posed a threat to law enforcement.
“President Trump repeatedly mischaracterized these facts in widely circulated messages as an attempt to murder himself, his family, and Secret Service agents, endangering the law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and jeopardizing the integrity of the proceedings,” prosecutors said. “He threatened,” he said. . “Accordingly, any restrictions prohibiting similar statements in the future should be modified to prohibit similar communications in the future.”
In making the charges, Trump and his campaign appear to have cited recently released court documents related to the 2022 search. The filing shows that the judge overseeing the case at the time questioned how the former president failed to notice that highly sensitive documents were in his bedroom.
Trump was in New Jersey when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.
“As President Trump is well aware, the FBI took extraordinary care to execute search warrants without being conspicuous and without unnecessary confrontation,” prosecutors said in a filing Friday, adding that searches were conducted when the former president and his family were away. planned.
Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers also opposed their motion and its timing.
What the prosecution is asking for is to modify the conditions of President Trump’s release, which is different from a gag order.
When a former president was indicted, bail guaranteed that his continued release would be contingent on compliance with certain conditions.
In making the request, prosecutors are asking that Trump face greater risk if he makes statements that the court finds threaten law enforcement.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night, but a campaign spokesperson said in an email: “Crook Joe Biden and his hack-and-thugs are obsessed with stripping President Trump and all American voters of their First Amendment rights. “There is,” he said. .”
“Repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential election are a blatant attempt to interfere with the election,” campaign spokesman Stephen Cheng wrote. “They are a last-ditch effort by desperate Democratic radicals running a losing campaign for a failed president.”
At a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland dismissed Trump’s claim that the use of deadly force was authorized during the search, calling the claim “false” and “extremely dangerous.”
Days earlier, after Trump’s initial claims, the FBI said in a statement that “standard protocols were followed in this search, as in all search warrants,” and that no further action had been ordered against Mar-a-Lago.
President Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he knowingly withheld national defense information related to classified documents discovered at his Florida property after leaving office and to charges that he ordered a Mar-a-Lago employee to delete security footage from the property. The trial was postponed indefinitely.
