Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday asked a federal court to bar former President Donald Trump from portraying the 2022 FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago as a threat to himself and his family, arguing that the allegations put law enforcement at risk.
In a motion filed with U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon, who is overseeing the Florida secret documents case, Smith asked to bar Trump from making statements that “pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents investigating and prosecuting this case.” In a campaign appeal, Trump claimed FBI agents were “prepared to take me out and put my family at risk.”
Court documents this week revealed that the FBI was applying a standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force unless the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that “the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person.”
“These deceptive and inflammatory allegations expose the law enforcement professionals involved in this case to unjustified and unacceptable risks,” Smith’s lawsuit states.
The FBI has said such contingencies are commonplace and that similar language was included in operations plans for a subsequent search of President Biden’s property in Delaware.
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Special counsel Jack Smith filed papers Friday seeking to restrict former President Trump from speaking publicly about the classified documents case in a way that could endanger law enforcement officials. (Getty Images)
The Justice Department has said the policy is routine and intended to limit, not encourage, the use of force during searches. Prosecutors have noted that the search of the Florida property was deliberately conducted while Trump and his family were out of state and was coordinated in advance with the U.S. Secret Service. Still, the revelation that the dozens of agents sent to search the home were prepared for possible violence came as a shock to Trump’s supporters, who say the two cases cannot be compared because the Justice Department is part of Biden’s own administration.
Smith’s lawsuit quotes Trump as saying the FBI “had the authority to shoot me” and that he was “itching to do the unthinkable”.
“They invite the kind of intimidation and harassment that has occurred when other participants in the legal proceedings against Mr. Trump have been targeted by his diatribes,” Smith wrote. “These risks could undermine the integrity of the process and jeopardize the safety of law enforcement.”
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An aerial view of Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s vacation home, on August 10, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
The plan was revealed as Trump’s legal team filed a motion to unseal documents related to the raid. Smith said that in their motion earlier this week, Trump’s legal team left out the key word “only” that prompted Trump to file charges against the FBI.
“Trump included the warrant and the operation form as exhibits to his motion, but the motion misquoted the operation form and omitted the crucial word ‘only’ before ‘if necessary’, with no ellipsis indicating the omission. The motion also omitted language explaining that deadly force is necessary only when ‘the officer has a reasonable belief that the subjection of such force will result in imminent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person.'”
“These statements paint a highly misleading impression about the intent and actions of federal law enforcement officers, falsely suggest that they were complicit in an assassination plot, and expose those who will testify at trial to risk of intimidation, violence and harassment,” the prosecutors added.
“The repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are a blatant attempt to interfere in our election,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang said.
Trump is accused of storing classified documents in the mansion that he removed after leaving the White House in 2021, then hindering government efforts to retrieve them. FBI agents seized 33 boxes of documents in the search.
The investigation is being overseen by Smith, an appointee of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has filed 40 felony charges against Trump, including violating the Espionage Act, making false statements to investigators and conspiring to obstruct justice.
Trump has maintained his innocence and slammed the case as an “election guessing scam” promoted by the Biden administration and “Crazy Jack Smith.”
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FILE – Police officers talk with a woman outside former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after an FBI raid, Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida. (Reuters/Marco Bello)
Earlier this month, Trump called for Smith’s arrest after prosecutors in the 45th president’s classified documents case acknowledged that the seized documents were no longer in their original order or arrangement.
“The order of the items in some of the boxes differs from the associated scanned images,” prosecutors acknowledged in court filings. They had previously told the court the documents were “in the original condition as seized.”
Read Smith’s filing – App users click here.
Fox News’ Emma Colton and David Spunt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
