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 false claim by Trump earlier this week that FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate by August 2022, they were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked and loaded, ready to take me out and endanger 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 the subject such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or any other person.
The policy is routine and intended to limit the use of force during searches. Prosecutors noted that the search was deliberately conducted while Trump and his family were away and was coordinated with the 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 assassinate 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 faces dozens of crimes accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that he took with him after leaving 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 tries to win back the White House, but beyond the ongoing hush-money prosecution in New Yorkit is not clear that any of the other three will stand trial before the elections.
