OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is following what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg did in New York as he attempts to silence former President Donald Trump.
The special counsel who is prosecuting the former president in the classified documents case against him has requested a gag order, The Daily Caller reported.
The special counsel filed a request Friday in which he asked Judge Aileen Cannon to modify the former president’s “conditions of release,” telling him that “he 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.”
“The law enforcement agents participating in this case conducted the search in an appropriate and professional manner, subject to the Department of Justice’s standard use-of-force policy. 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 officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings,” he said in the filing.
“A restriction prohibiting future similar statements does not restrict legitimate speech. Trump’s conditions of release should therefore be modified to prohibit similar communications going forward,” he said.
The request came after some Republicans seized on language in the search warrant that authorized the use of “deadly force” for FBI agents executing the raid.
But the FBI explained that the same language was used in the search warrant for President Joe Biden’s residence and that it is standard.
“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter,” the FBI said to Fox News.
“The standard deadly force policy statement included in the operations order for the search of the former president’s residence was also included in the operations order for the search of the sitting president’s residence in Delaware, as is standard practice for all FBI operations orders,” it said.
Former President Trump attacked the language in his search warrant on his Truth Social account.
“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,” Trump’s Truth Social post read. ‘NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!’” he said.
“Crooked Joe Biden and his hacks and thugs are obsessed with trying to deprive President Trump and all American voters of their First Amendment rights. Repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election. They are last ditch efforts of desperate Democrat radicals running a losing campaign for a failed president,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
Smith said that the former president’s posts, and his associates, were “intentionally false and inflammatory” and were used to “distort the circumstances under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned and executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.”
“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,” he said.
The FBI language was the same that was used in the search of President Biden’s Delaware home and showed that authorities had “planned to bring ‘Standard Issue Weapons,’ ‘Ammo,’ ‘Handcuffs,’ and ‘medium and large sized bolt cutters,’ and were ordered to wear ‘unmarked polo or collared shirts’ and to keep ‘law enforcement equipment concealed.’”
