Jack Smith Requests Trump Gag Order in Florida Documents Case

Gage Skidmore

Late on Friday night, a small bombshell was dropped in the middle of Judge Cannon’s docket. Following days of incendiary rhetoric from the former president, who made and repeated the false claim that Joe Biden had intended to assassinate him when the FBI executed a lawful search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Jack Smith and his team had finally had enough. A motion requesting a modification of his release conditions was filed – essentially asking for a gag order to stop the former president from making statements that pose a threat to law enforcement.

On Thursday – a day before the motion was filed – Attorney General Merrick Garland called Trump’s claims “false” and “extremely dangerous”. The language in the search warrant paperwork that Trump took issue with was actually standard and boilerplate – used every day across the country – setting out the Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy, which limits when deadly force can be used. It was not unique to Trump and makes clear that such measures can only be taken when an officer “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.” Compounding the lie about the use of a standard policy statement was the fact that the FBI took careful steps to ensure that the warrant was executed when Trump was out of state. He wasn’t even at Mar-a-Lago at the time.

Trump’s claims that the FBI was “locked and loaded and ready” to take him out, “just itching to do the unthinkable”, were, in the Special Counsel’s view, posing a “significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution” of the case. “Those statements create a grossly misleading impression about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents – falsely suggesting that they were complicit in a plot to assassinate him – and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment.”

It's certainly not the first time that the leader of the so-called ‘party of law and order’ has put law enforcement at risk as a result of his invective. Who could forget the images streamed around the world of Trump supporters, in all their MAGA garb, attacking police officers on January 6, beating them with flag poles flying the Stars and Stripes, tazing them, spraying them with mace? Days after the warrant was executed at Mar-a-Lago, an armed Trump supporter, inspired by the former president’s outrage at the search, attacked the FBI’s Cincinnati office and was eventually killed after an hours-long standoff. Following that incident, the Associated Press reported that there were “growing threats…against FBI agents and offices across the country” as a direct result of right-wing rhetoric that spewed forth after the search of Trump’s residence. The AP also reported that users of the far-right social media platform Gab were saying that they were “preparing for an armed revolution.”

This isn’t a new phenomenon in far-right circles, with militias and white supremacists plotting against federal law enforcement for decades, particularly in the wake of the Ruby Ridge siege of 1992 and the follow year’s standoff at Waco. What is new is the size of the lead instigator’s megaphone, who happens to be both a former president and a potential future one.

Conservative attorney George Conway spoke to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about the danger of Trump sending out fundraising emails to potentially millions of recipients claiming he was almost assassinated, calling it “absolutely obscene” and a symbol of the “moral depravity” that both emanates from and surrounds Trump and his hangers on. Even Fox News hosts blasted the former president, with Howard Kurtz making the point, alongside his guests, that “it only takes a couple of crazy people” to internalize the message and decide to act upon it.

The Special Counsel made clear in his filing that Trump’s defense team opposed the motion, and they now have until June 7 to respond. Then it’s up to Judge Cannon to decide what to do. Some observers have speculated that if she denies the request, it might be a good time for Jack Smith to go to the Eleventh Circuit and highlight her obvious bias against prosecutors. We’ll have to wait and see - and I do mean “wait”, because it takes Cannon an age to decide anything in this case.