Washington – The federal judge overseeing special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case against former President Donald Trump recused himself prosecutors' request that the court impose a gag order in certain public statements that, according to them, represented a danger to law enforcement.
In an order issued on Tuesday, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon denied Smith's motion to modify the conditions of Trump's pretrial release to bar him from making comments “similar to” those he has made in recent weeks in which Smith alleged that Trump “endangered the law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of those proceedings.”
Cannon's brief ruling said it denied the Justice Department's motion “without prejudice,” meaning Smith could file another motion. The judge criticized the special counsel's handling of the request, writing that prosecutors failed to meaningfully consult with Trump's defense team before filing the motion, as required by local rules .
The special counsel filed his motion Friday evening after Trump's attorneys said they had asked him for an extension so the parties could discuss the matter on Monday. Cannon wrote that prosecutors' handling of the proceedings was “utterly lacking in substance and professional courtesy.”
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Federal prosecutors' decision to limit Trump's public comments came after the former president made false claims that FBI agents were “authorized to shoot him” while executing a court-authorized search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022. It was during that search that agents recovered more than 100 classified documents from the residence as part of the federal investigation into the former president's handling of sensitive records of the government
Smith alleged Friday that Trump had “brutally distorted these standard practices by mischaracterizing them as a plan to kill him, his family and United States Secret Service agents.” His social media posts and campaign emails on the issue, prosecutors wrote, “pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement officers.”
The special counsel did not detail instances in which threats to law enforcement were linked to Trump's most recent comments. Instead, he argued that the former president's past speech has posed threats to witnesses and pointed to a 2022 case in which an individual attacked an FBI field office in Ohio.
On Monday, Trump's team rejected, writing Smith's motion was “an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional application of censure” that “unfairly targets President Trump's campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency”.
Defense lawyers also took issue with how prosecutors filed their motion, accusing them of “rushing” to file it on a Friday night in violation of local rules requiring them to discuss the matter together.
“In no event can an e-mail exchange initiated at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday evening constitute the type of transfer required by [the rules]” Trump's lawyer wrote, pointing to a series of emails with prosecutors. In those emails, prosecutors countered that Trump's comment “required an expedited request for relief that could not wait for the head of week to show up.”
Trump's defense team also asked Cannon to sanction prosecutors for the alleged rules violations.
The judge on Tuesday opted not to sanction Smith's team, but rejected his requested gag order.
The special counsel's office declined to comment on the ruling.
Friday's request from the special counsel came after Trump's comments about the search of his residence, which followed the recently unsealed documents of the 2022 Mar-a-Lago manhunt. Those documents included a use-of-force policy for FBI agents that prohibits the use of deadly force except when agents are in imminent danger. Justice Department prosecutors said the language was “standard and unobjectionable” and argued that “the FBI took extraordinary care to execute the search warrant discreetly and without unnecessary confrontation.”
“As planned, the FBI executed the search warrant in a professional and cooperative manner, at a time when Trump and his family were out of state,” Smith's team wrote Friday .
In a statement last week, the FBI said: “The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of lethal force. No one ordered additional measures to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”
The special counsel indicted Trump on 40 counts in the Southern District of Florida that accuse him of illegally withholding national defense information from his time in the White House. He and two aides are also accused of working to obstruct the federal investigation.
All three have pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied wrongdoing.
Earlier this month, Cannon delayed the trial process indefinitely as he said the parties needed to continue working through pretrial motions.
