Jack Smith unveils tranche of evidence to support Trump gag order – Washington Examiner

Special counsel Jack Smith is continuing to push for a judge in Florida to restrict former President Donald Trump‘s speech, submitting to the court Wednesday night dozens of examples to support his request.

Prosecutors for Smith filed numerous instances of threats Trump supporters made in the wake of the former president making critical statements about the investigation, as the government attempts to convince Judge Aileen Cannon to approve the speech restriction.

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Cannon, a Trump appointee, appeared skeptical of the government’s request at a hearing this week. She suggested there was a lack of evidence to support a direct correlation between Trump’s remarks and threats that have been made to law enforcement officials.

“There still needs to be a factual connection between A and B,” Cannon said.

The judge allowed Smith to submit more evidence of the correlation, which he did Wednesday.

Smith has asked Cannon to modify the conditions of Trump’s release that the former president agreed to when he was arraigned on charges of unlawfully retaining classified documents last year so that the former president cannot make certain statements about law enforcement officials.

“The Court should exercise its authority to impose a condition that Trump may not make public statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case,” prosecutors wrote in the request.

They said their request was prompted by Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, peddling a false narrative that his opponent, President Joe Biden, plotted to assassinate him. Trump based his claims on the revelation that a warrant the FBI used to search his Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 contained policy information about the use of “lethal force.”

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Trump said in fundraising emails, for example, that the government “WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME,” was “just itching to do the unthinkable,” and was “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

When Trump first began making the claims, the FBI quickly put out a statement explaining that the language on the warrant was standard and did not deviate from the bureau’s normal practices.

Prosecutors called Trump’s remarks “deceptive” and said they “irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows.”

The examples they submitted Wednesday to prove their point were mostly threats made to Trump’s targets prior to May, when Trump introduced the theory. One example occurred after that time frame, earlier this month, when a Texas man named Timothy Muller called the FBI’s Baltimore office and warned he would assault and murder an agent there.

“The last thing you’ll ever hear are the horrified shrieks of your widow and orphans,” Muller said in a voicemail on June 11, the same day Hunter Biden was convicted in a gun case that the FBI’s Baltimore office had been involved with. Muller claimed in the voicemail that the agent let the president’s son off easy.

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Trump, who opposes Smith’s request, filed his own motion Wednesday night, asking Cannon to grant his defense team two extra weeks to respond to Smith’s new batch of evidence.

It is unclear when Cannon will issue orders on Smith’s and Trump’s requests, but if she were to side with the special counsel before Thursday night’s presidential debate, her decision would likely affect how the former president would be able to address his case in Florida during the event.

Trump’s attorneys have argued that Smith is attempting to interfere with the election by restricting the former president’s “constitutionally protected campaign speech.”