In a new court filing before federal Judge Aileen Cannon, Special Counsel Jack Smith accuses ex-President Donald Trump of exposing members of law enforcement to possible threats and violence with recent deception spread both by Trump personally and his campaign.
Specifically, it’s the claim that federal authorities were angling to assassinate Trump around the time of a federal search of his Florida property Mar-a-Lago amid the investigation that progressed into the current criminal case facing the ex-president. Trump stands accused of illegally harboring government documents from his time in office, and he’s actually spoken quite freely — at least outside of court — about having the documents, just insisting that he was perfectly in the right in whatever version of his conduct that he happens to be going with at the time.
The false claim about a plot to assassinate Trump stems from a routine — and, actually, sharply limiting — allowance for the use of deadly force in the carrying out of the judicially authorized search at Mar-a-Lago. Details and experts consistently point to that part of the prep for carrying out the warrant as standard rather than related in any manner to Trump in particular. But now, the worry is that Trump’s claims could set up threats and violence on the basis of imagined defense against a threat that’s not actually real.
“The Government’s request is necessary because of several intentionally false and inflammatory statements recently made by Trump that distort the circumstances under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned and executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Those statements create a grossly misleading impression about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents—falsely suggesting that they were complicit in a plot to assassinate him—and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment,” prosecutors wrote Friday in court, seeking limits on Trump’s comments.
