Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday evening rejected special counsel Jack Smith's Friday request that a federal judge in Florida modify the conditions of Trump's release in the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents.
Federal prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the documents case, to modify the condition of Trump's release to prevent him from making public statements that “pose a significant danger, imminent and foreseeable to the law enforcement officers” involved in the prosecution.
“Trump's repeated mischaracterization of these events in widely distributed messages as an attempt to kill him, his family, and Secret Service agents has endangered law enforcement officials involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and has threatened the integrity of these proceedings,” prosecutors said. Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump.
“A restriction that prohibits future similar statements does not restrict legitimate speech,” they said.
The special counsel's request for Cannon followed Trump's false claim last week that FBI agents who ransacked his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022 they were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked and loaded ready to take me out and endanger my family.”
Trump was referring to a revelation in a court document that the FBI, during that search, followed a standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or another person.”
The policy is routine and intended to limit the use of force during searches. Prosecutors noted that the search was intentionally conducted while Trump and his family were away and coordinated with the Secret Service. No force was used.
Prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith's team argued in a court filing late Friday that Trump's statements falsely suggesting that federal agents “were complicit in a plot to kill him” would expose the agents of the law “at risk of threats, violence and harassment”. Some of them are expected to be called as witnesses at Trump's trial.
But Trump's lawyers on Monday called Smith's request “extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional censorship,” saying in their filing:[t]The motion unfairly targets President Trump's campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency.”
They argue that Smith goes further than any previous request by any other prosecutor in the cases against the former president because the prosecution's motion ties Trump's freedom to his campaign speech.
The former president also argues that prosecutors violated local rules by failing to properly “convers” them before filing the motion. Trump's lawyers said Smith's team, in filing the motion late on a holiday Friday, before final arguments This week, in New York's separate “hush money” criminal case against Trump, he failed to provide a reasonable conference period, which they say is required by local rules in the Southern District of Florida. Trump's lawyers provided email correspondence between the parties since Friday night as exhibits.
Trump also asked Cannon to sanction the Justice Department's legal team for allegedly violating local rules.
Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this week blasted Trump's claim as “extremely dangerous.” Garland noted that the document Trump was referring to is a standard policy limiting the use of force that was even used in the consensual search of President Joe Biden's home as part of an investigation into the Democrats' handling of classified documents.
trump he faces dozens of felonies accusing him of illegally hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, classified documents that he took with him after he left the White House in 2021 and then obstructing the FBI's efforts to get them back He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
It is one of four criminal cases facing Trump as he seeks to regain the White House, but out of the ongoing prosecution for New York hush moneyit is not clear that any of the other three will go to trial before the election.
—Robert Legare contributed to this report.
