In a new 12-page filing, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith is urging U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to take action to prevent former President Donald Trump from making baseless claims about the FBI supposedly trying to assassinate him.
The filing, which Smith submitted to the Southern District of Florida on Friday night, asks Cannon to amend Trump's conditions of release to make it clear "that [Trump] may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case." He specifically mentions that Cannon has the power to do so under the Bail Reform Act, and wrote that she has an "independent obligation to protect the integrity of this judicial proceeding."
"The Government’s request is necessary because of several intentionally false and inflammatory statements recently made by Trump that distort the circumstances under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned and executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago," Smith wrote in the filing. "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."
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Smith went into detail about how agents conducting the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida took great care to coordinate with Trump's Secret Service detail, Mar-a-Lago staff and Trump's attorney when executing the search warrant. He noted that the search was carried out specifically when Trump and his family were in New York in order to minimize the chance of a confrontation.
Nonetheless, Trump and his allies have been repeatedly spreading the debunked claim that the FBI was out to assassinate him during the raid. In a post to his Truth Social account, Trump claimed that President Joe Biden's DOJ "AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said without evidence that Biden "gave the green light" to "assassinate" Trump, and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) baselessly asserted that Biden "ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
"[A]s Trump is well aware, no force was used or threatened in executing the Mar-a-Lago search warrant: as planned, the FBI executed the search warrant in a professional and cooperative manner, at a time when Trump and his family were out of the state," Smith wrote.
"These deceptive and inflammatory claims expose the law enforcement professionals who are involved in this case to unjustified and unacceptable risks: they invite the sort of threats and harassment that have occurred when other participants in legal proceedings against Trump have been targeted by his invective," he added. "Those risks have the potential to undermine the integrity of the proceedings as well as jeopardize the safety of law enforcement."
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Trump's attorneys have until June 6 to respond to the filing, after which Judge Cannon will be expected to decide whether to alter the conditions of the former president's release. She previously scuttled Trump's May 20 trial date in the classified documents case, citing a backlog of pre-trial rulings she has yet to issue. Cannon said deciding on those pending motions could take until July.
Cannon has previously been criticized for "running out the clock" for Trump, who appointed her to a lifetime position on the federal bench in 2020. The classified documents is one of Smith's two federal indictments against the former president, who would be able to have his appointed attorney general dismiss them if he wins another term in the White House this fall.
Click here to read the full 12-page filing in its entirety (PDF link).
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