Federal prosecutors on Friday asked the judge overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump to bar him from public statements that may pose a danger to law enforcement.
Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a federal judge Friday to bar former President Donald Trump from characterizing the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago as a threat to him and his family, arguing that the claims put law enforcement agents in danger.
In the motion filed to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the classified documents case in Florida, Smith requested Trump be prohibited from making statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.” Trump claimed in a campaign appeal that FBI agents were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”
Court documents revealed this week that the FBI used its standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
“These deceptive and inflammatory claims expose the law enforcement professionals who are involved in this case to unjustified and unacceptable risks,” Smith’s filing reads.
The FBI has said such contingencies are routine and that similar language was contained in an operational plan accompanying a subsequent search of President Biden’s properties in Delaware.
The Justice Department says the policy is routine and meant to limit, rather than encourage, the use of force during searches.
