Jack Smith repeats request for Trump gag order in classified documents case

Special Counsel Jack Smith repeated a request on Friday, for a gag order against former President Donald Trump in his classified documents case, after the former president made inflammatory comments about law enforcement in the case.

Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, rejected Smith's previous request for the gag order on Tuesday, claiming the motion was “wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy.” In his request, Smith alleged that Trump's comments on law enforcement “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents."

Trump claimed last week that President Joe Biden was "locked and loaded" and ready to take him out, which was similar to rhetoric he used when talking about the FBI. Attorney General Merrick Garland has slammed the remarks, and the FBI said it followed standard protocol when raiding Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022. Trump was not home at the time of the raid.

"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," Smith said in the filing on Friday, according to NBC News. "[The] deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows."

Cannon's previous rejection asserted that Smith broke protocol by not discussing the motion with the defense. This week's motion included a certificate confirming that prosecutors met this requirement by conferring with the defense through a phone call on Wednesday, and emails on Thursday and Friday.

Trump's legal team still opposed the gag order request, asserting that it infringes on his First Amendment rights by stifling his right to free speech. Trump was under a gag order in his hush money case, which concluded with a guilty verdict on all charges on Thursday.

"On the merits, President Trump’s position is that the requested modification is a blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the American People, which would in effect allow President Trump’s political opponent to regulate his campaign communications to voters across the country," Trump's lawyers said. 

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just the News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.