Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Trump’s Attorneys Ask Judge To Sanction Jack Smith’s Team Over Gag Order Request: ‘Unconstitutional Censorship’

Screenshot/YouTube/CSPAN

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team asked Judge Aileen Cannon Monday to impose sanctions on the prosecutors who requested a gag order in his Florida classified documents case.

In response to Trump’s Truth Social post pointing to reports that the FBI was “authorized” to use deadly force during the Mar-a-Lago raid in 2022, special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested on Friday that the judge amend his conditions of release to clarify that he cannot “make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.” Various outlets and social media accounts reported last week that the FBI was authorized to use “deadly force” during the raid based on a statement included in the raid order and highlighted by Trump’s attorneys in a separate filing, though the FBI later said the statement was “standard protocol.”

WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the “Icebox,” and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A… pic.twitter.com/rWbCnL8S40

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) May 21, 2024

Trump’s attorneys argued Sunday the requested gag order “unjustly targets President Trump’s campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency,” calling it an “extraordinary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional censorship application.”

“The Motion also treads new — extremely problematic — ground as a requested prior restraint that is different in kind from the unconstitutional gag orders that prosecutors have sought in New York and Washington, D.C,” they wrote. “Specifically, the Office seeks to condition President Trump’s liberty on his conformance with the views of Jack Smith and Smith’s associates about what constitutes appropriate argument based on the record in this case, and to require the Probation Office and the Court to mediate disputes against a backdrop of potentially imprisoning a political opponent who is successfully defeating Smith’s boss and preferred candidate.”

His attorneys also took issue with the timing of the motion, writing that prosecutors’ rush to file it on the Friday night ahead of Memorial Day weekend was “bad-faith behavior.”

“The decision by the Special Counsel’s Office to do so, when it did so, cannot be explained in a manner that is consistent with the need for prosecutorial ethics and public confidence in these proceedings,” they wrote. ” In addition, the bias and animus that are evident from the Office’s recent course of action are relevant to the pending motions to dismiss based on selective and vindictive prosecution as well as prosecutorial misconduct.”