Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s Florida confidential documents case on Friday asked a federal judge to bar the former president from making public statements that posed “a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement officials” who investigate and process the case.
The request for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case, comes after the former president falsely claimed this week in a Truth Social post that the Biden administration “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” in his search in Mar-a in 2022. -Lago for classified documents. The Trump campaign also claimed in a fundraising email that President Joe Biden was “locked and loaded, ready to take me out” during a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate for sensitive documents.
Prosecutors from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office said in their court filing that the agents acted “in an appropriate and professional manner, subject to the Department of Justice’s standard use of force policy” and argued that Trump’s allegations posed a threat to the agents responsible for law enforcement.
“Trump’s repeated mischaracterization of these facts 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 threatened the integrity of these proceedings.” , the prosecutors wrote. . “A restriction prohibiting future similar statements should therefore be modified to prohibit similar communications in the future.”
In making the accusations, Trump and his campaign appeared to be citing recently unsealed court documents related to the 2022 search. The filings showed that the judge overseeing the case at the time questioned how the former president did not realize he had highly confidential documents in his possession. room.
Trump was in New Jersey when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
“As Trump well knows,” prosecutors noted in Friday’s filing, the FBI “took extraordinary care to execute the search warrant discreetly and without unnecessary confrontation,” and timed the search for a time when the former -president and his family would be absent.
Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers objected to their motion as well as its timing.
The prosecutors’ request is to modify Trump’s release conditions, which is different from a gag order.
When the former president was indicted, bail guaranteed that his continued release depended on meeting certain terms.
In making the request, prosecutors are asking that Trump face greater risks if he makes statements that the court finds put law enforcement at risk.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night, but a campaign spokesperson said in an email that “corrupt Joe Biden and his Hacks and Thugs are obsessed with trying to disenfranchise President Trump and all American voters of their First Amendment rights.” .”
“The repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung wrote. “They are the last efforts of desperate Radical Democrats in a losing campaign for a failed president.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday rejected Trump’s claim about the authorized use of deadly force during the search, calling the allegation “false” and “extremely dangerous” during a news conference.
In a rare statement days earlier, following Trump’s initial allegations, the FBI also said it had “followed standard protocol in this search, as we do for all search warrants” and that no additional measures had been ordered for Mar-a-Lago. .
Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he knowingly withheld national defense information in connection with classified documents that were discovered at his Florida estate after he left office and that he ordered a Mar-a-Lago employee to delete the video property security. The trial was postponed indefinitely.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
