On Friday evening, federal prosecutors asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents trial to bar him from making any statements that could endanger law enforcement officials involved in the case.
Prosecutors said Mr Trump recently made “grossly misleading” claims about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and Florida residence, two years ago. The request came just days after the former president falsely claimed the FBI had been authorized to shoot him when agents descended on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and discovered more than 100 classified documents while executing a court-approved search warrant.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump falsely claimed that President Biden had “authorized the FBI to use deadly force” during the search.
Trump’s post was a response to an FBI operational plan for the Mar-a-Lago search that was unsealed on Tuesday as part of a legal motion filed by Trump’s lawyers. The plan included a standard reference to the use of deadly force during the search, which prosecutors said Trump had falsified.
“As Trump well knows, the FBI took extraordinary care to execute the search warrant discreetly and without unnecessary confrontation,” prosecutors wrote in a motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case.
“They planned the search of Mar-a-Lago for a time when he and his family would not be home,” the prosecutor added. “They planned to coordinate with Trump’s attorney, Secret Service agents and Mar-a-Lago staff before and during the execution of the warrant. And they planned contingencies – which in fact never occurred – about who to communicate with should Trump arrive at the scene.”
The motion to Judge Cannon marked the first time prosecutors sought to limit Trump’s public statements in the case.
Prosecutors did not seek to impose a news gag order on Mr Trump, but instead asked Judge Cannon to revise his release conditions and prohibit him from making any public statements “that pose a substantial, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement officials involved in the investigation.”