Jack Smith requests gag order on Trump to prevent 'danger' to law enforcement officers

Special counsel Jack Smith has notched a string of losses recently in his classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, but he does not appear ready to wave the white flag.

Last week, Smith asked presiding Judge Aileen Cannon to stop Trump from commenting publicly in a manner he believes is posing a threat to the safety of law enforcement officers working on the case, as the Washington Examiner reports.

Newest front in long battle

Smith's request was triggered by remarks made by Trump concerning recently unsealed court filings related to the FBI's raid on his Florida estate in 2022.

As Fox News reported, the FBI had received authorization to use deadly force as part of the search of Trump's home, and though the Justice Department has gone to great lengths to portray the situation as part of standard operating procedure, the former president was unmoved.

As evidence of his skepticism, Trump took to his Truth Social platform and said that Biden's DOJ “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” at his estate, as NBC explained.

Trump's campaign fundraising team also sent an email saying that Biden officials had been “locked & loaded ready to take me out.”

Gag order sought

In response, Smith implored Cannon to impose an order preventing Trump from commenting further, because he believes the former president is posing a “significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” involved in the case.

The special counsel insisted that the agents involved in the raid acted “in an appropriate and professional manner, subject to the Department of Justice's standard use-of-force policy.”

The court filing added, “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 the case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings,”

For that reason, the prosecution asserted, “A restriction, prohibiting future statements should therefore be modified to prohibit similar communications going forward.”

Trump hits back

Unsurprisingly, Trump saw things quite differently, suggesting to Smith that “Gag Orders have a very strong tendency to BACKFIRE.”

“If anybody should be GAGGED, it should be Deranged Jack, who was recently caught doing very bad things – and I should be able to talk about that and everything else having to do with this Hoax,” he added, but whether Cannon will agree is something that remains to be seen.