Former President Trump filed a motion with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida requesting that she sanction special counsel Jack Smith over his request for a gag order.
Former President Trump’s attorneys on Monday accused the government of “unconstitutional censorship” in response to federal prosecutors asking the judge in his classified documents case for a gag order.
In a court filing, Trump’s outraged legal team asked a federal judge in Florida to sanction and fine prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which requested that the court modify Trump’s conditions of release and prohibit him from making future statements about FBI agents who executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 22, 2023.
“President Donald J. Trump respectfully submits this procedural opposition to the May 24, 2024 filing by the Special Counsel’s Office, which improperly asks the Court to impose an unconstitutional gag order on President Trump, as a condition of his pretrial release, based on vague and unsupported assertions about threats to law enforcement personnel whose names have been redacted from public filings and whose identities are already subject to a protective order,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing.
“… [T]he Court should strike the Motion, make civil contempt findings as to all government attorneys who participated in the decision to file the Motion without meaningful conferral, and impose sanctions after holding an evidentiary hearing regarding the purpose and intent behind the Office’s decision to willfully disregard required procedures,” the defense attorneys wrote.
