WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors on Friday asked the judge overseeing the classified documents case against Donald Trump to bar the former president from making public statements that “pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement officers” participating in the prosecution.
The request to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon follows a distorted claim by Trump earlier this week that the FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022 were “authorized to shoot me” and “locked up.” . & loaded, ready to take me out & endangering my family.”
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was referring to the revelation in a court document that the FBI followed a standard use of force policy during the search that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that it is “ subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to any other person.”
The Justice Department policy is routine and intended to limit rather than encourage the use of force during searches. Prosecutors noted that the search of the Florida property was deliberately conducted while Trump and his family were out of state and was coordinated in advance with the U.S. Secret Service. No violence was used.
Prosecutors from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team said in court filings late Friday that Trump’s statements, which falsely suggested federal agents were “complicit in a plot to kill him,” expose law enforcement — some of whom noted that they will be called as witnesses at his trial – “at the risk of threats, violence and intimidation.”
“Trump’s repeated mischaracterization of these facts in widespread reports as an attempt to assassinate him, his family and Secret Service agents has compromised law enforcement officials involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and the integrity of this procedure threatened,” prosecutors said. Cannon, whom Trump nominated to the bench.
“A restriction that prohibits future similar speech does not restrict legitimate speech,” they said.
Defense attorneys have objected to the government’s motion, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Friday evening.
Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this week called Trump’s claim “extremely dangerous.” Garland noted that the document Trump was referring to is a standard policy limiting the use of force, which was even used in the consensual search of President Joe Biden’s home as part of an investigation into the Democrat’s handling of classified documents.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement Friday that Biden and “his hackers and thugs are obsessed with trying to deprive President Trump and all American voters of their First Amendment rights.”
“Repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election. They are the last-ditch efforts of desperate Democratic radicals waging a losing campaign for a failed president,” Cheung said.
Trump faces dozens of felony charges accusing him of illegally hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, classified documents he took with him after leaving the White House in 2021, and then the FBI’s efforts to obtain them. back. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
It is one of four criminal cases facing Trump in his bid to reclaim the White House, but aside from the ongoing hush-money prosecution in New York, it is not clear that any of the other three will go to trial before the election.
Trump has already imposed restrictions on his speech in two of the other cases because of inflammatory comments that officials say threaten the integrity of the prosecutions.
In the New York case, Trump has been fined and threatened with prison for repeatedly violating a gag order that bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others involved in the case.
He is also subject to a silence order in his federal criminal election interference case in Washington. That order limits what he can say about witnesses, attorneys in the case and court staff, although an appeals court gave him freedom to speak about special prosecutor Smith, who brought the case.
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Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington.