Jack Smith seeks gag order against Trump over alleged 'danger' to law enforcement

Having recently suffered some notable setbacks in his classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith appears to be on the warpath once again.

On Friday, Smith asked Federal District Judge Ailee Cannon to prevent Trump from making further comments in a manner he asserts is posing danger to law enforcement officers, as the Daily Caller reports.

Latest battle emerges

Smith's request came in the wake of remarks Trump made regarding recently unsealed court filings pertaining to the FBI's 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate.

As Fox News reported last week, the FBI had been authorized to use deadly force in connection with the search on Trump's home, and though the DOJ has since said that the operation was conducted in keeping with standard operating procedures identical to those applied in a search of Joe Biden's Delaware home, the former president remained skeptical.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that Biden's Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” at his home, as NBC News noted.

In addition, the Trump campaign sent a fundraising email suggesting that the Biden administration had been “locked & loaded ready to take me out” when it sent agents to Florida.

Smith seeks silence

Reacting to those comments, Smith sought an order blocking Trump from making further comments that he believes pose a “significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” working on the case against the former president.

Smith's team wrote in a court filing that the agents involved in the Trump raid conducted themselves “in an appropriate and professional manner, subject to the Department of Justice's standard use-of-force policy” and blasted what prosecution lawyers said were dangerous statements to the contrary.

“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,” they said.

As such, they continued, “A restriction prohibiting future statements should therefore be modified to prohibit similar communications going forward.”

Trump responds

None of those claims sat well with Trump, who suggested on Truth Social, “Gag Orders have a very strong tendency to BACKFIRE” and added, “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 – from which Crooked Joe Biden was FULLY EXONERATED.”

Which side of the argument Cannon is likely to take, however, is something that remains to be seen.