Jack Smith makes another request for Trump gag in secret documents case

Special counsel Jack Smith has again asked a Florida federal judge to block Donald Trump from making statements that could harm law enforcement officials in his secret documents case.

Trump has made false claims about the 2022 Mar-a-Lago classified documents search, claiming that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived at his home prepared to kill him. He had made the same assertion days prior, prompting Mr Smith to file another motion asking US District Judge Aileen Cannon to modify the conditions of Trump’s release.

“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,” Mr Smith wrote in the latest filing, according to NBC News.

In a fundraising email, Trump’s campaign claimed that President Biden’s campaign was “locked & loaded ready to take me out.”

Trump was not at his home when the historic raid occurred. Authorities have said that his statements targeted use-of-force policies for the Federal Bureau of Investigation stating that officers are allowed to use lethal force “when the officer 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.”

In the filing, Mr Smith said: “Trump, however, has grossly distorted these standard practices by mischaracterizing them as a plan to kill him, his family and US Secret Service agents.

“Those deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows.”