‘This is bad-faith behavior, plain and simple,’ President Trump’s attorneys have alleged, asking the court to sanction special counsel Jack Smith and his team.
Former President Donald Trump on Monday filed a court motion asking the judge in his classified documents case to strike down special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a gag order and impose sanctions on the special counsel and all government attorneys who took part in the decision to file the “unconstitutional” request to muzzle the former president.
Following the emergence of an operations plan for the Mar-a-Lago raid stating that FBI agents should be prepared to “engage with” President Trump and his Secret Service agents during the search and seizure, the former president’s campaign claimed that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was “locked and loaded” and ready to kill the former president because the FBI had been authorized to use “deadly force” during the raid. The use of deadly force was included in a statement on the document, which quoted standard government policy around such law enforcement actions.
Following the Trump campaign’s remarks, Mr. Smith’s team filed for a gag order. The key premise from President Trump’s attorneys in objecting to the special counsel’s request is based on procedural violations, including lack of meaningful conferral with defense counsel, and a lack of evidence of the purported safety risks that the gag order was ostensibly meant to address.
Mr. Smith and his team “improperly” asked the court to impose the gag order because they failed to confer with defense counsel, the former president’s attorneys wrote in the filing, calling the request an “extraordinary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional censorship application.” They also accused the special counsel and his team of failing to identify any direct evidence of the safety risks to law enforcement agents that they claim exist.
“There was no basis for rushing to file the Motion on Friday night,” they wrote. “This is bad-faith behavior, plain and simple.”
President Trump’s attorneys are seeking relief in the form of civil contempt findings as to all government attorneys who took part in the decision to file the gag order request, and for the judge to impose sanctions on them after holding an evidentiary hearing.
A spokesperson for Mr. Smith’s office declined to comment on the motion but filings by President Trump’s attorneys indicate that they notified the special counsel that they planned to file the opposing motion—and that Mr. Smith’s office told them that it opposes the relief being sought.
‘Deadly Force’ Authorization
The “deadly force” authorization chapter comes in an ongoing legal saga in which President Trump has been accused of improperly retaining sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.
It’s a case that the former president insists is a politically motivated bid to thwart his 2024 presidential comeback bid—and one that he says reflects a two-tiered standard of justice since President Biden was found to have improperly kept classified documents but has faced no charges.
In his gag order request on May 24, Mr. Smith asked Judge Cannon to modify the conditions of President Trump’s release from jail before trial to prevent him from making statements that may pose a “significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger” to the FBI agents involved in the planning and execution of the search and seizure of presidential documents stored at his Florida estate.
Prosecutors said in the gag order request that President Trump “distorted” the standard inclusion of the “deadly force” policy when he made statements that the FBI “WAS AUTHORIZED to SHOOT ME.”
“That allegation is false, and it is extremely dangerous,” Mr. Garland said at a Thursday press conference, a day before prosecutors asked for a gag order to prevent President Trump from making similar claims.
After the gag order was filed, President Trump doubled down on his rhetoric, sharing a meme on social media that features an image of President Joe Biden giving a speech while clenching his fists, with the caption: “Biden’s DOJ authorized use of deadly force against President Trump in Mar-a-Lago raid.”
Trump Opposes Gag Order
In their May 27 motion opposing Mr. Smith’s gag order request, President Trump’s attorneys insisted that they and the former president have “great respect” for law enforcement and would not oppose a legitimate request that would address safety risks.
“President Trump and the defense team have great respect for law enforcement agents who do their jobs with integrity,” they wrote. “We have not, and will not, stand in the way of credible assertions about the potential for safety risks to such individuals.”
“On the other hand, we will not acquiesce in unsupported histrionics from biased and reckless prosecutors who have shown no respect for the First Amendment, other constitutional protections, the Local Rules, and the Court’s orders,” they added.
The former president’s attorneys also alleged a “string of procedural abuses and misrepresentations over the course of many months” on the part of Mr. Smith, adding that during a May 22 hearing on pending pretrial motions, the judge even admonished Mr. Smith’s team to “just calm down.”
“Far from it, the Office contacted defense counsel about filing the Motion at 5:30 p.m. on Friday evening before Memorial Day Weekend,” they wrote, adding that they responded “immediately” but Mr. Smith’s office declined their request to discuss the gag order request on Monday so that they could have a chance to meet with President Trump and discuss it beforehand.
President Trump’s attorneys argue that Mr. Smith’s motion was improperly made because local rules require that the special counsel’s office “meaningfully confer” with defense counsel prior to making the motion.
“They did not,” the attorneys wrote. “Instead, they persisted with a troubling pattern of pursuing media coverage rather than justice.
“Such an approach, by prosecutors sworn to uphold the law, should have no place in Your Honor’s courtroom. Such an approach requires consequences to ensure fundamental fairness.”
The operations plan for the Mar-a-Lago raid was produced through discovery earlier this month.
President Trump’s lawyers have stated that there was no justification for the FBI to bring guns into Mar-a-Lago.
The FBI told The Epoch Times earlier this week that its agents had “followed standard protocol” in the Mar-a-Lago search “as we do for all search warrants.”
Mr. Smith’s gag order request was the first of its kind in President Trump’s classified documents case.
Caden Pearson contributed to this report.
