Donald Trump calls latest Jack Smith motion “extremely problematic”

Former President Donald Trump is seeking sanctions against special counsel Jack Smith‘s office after federal prosecutors asked for a judge to limit the former president’s public comments regarding his classified documents case in Florida.

In a filing on Monday, Trump’s attorneys said that Smith’s request amounted to “unconstitutional censorship” on the former president, who is accused of mishandling sensitive information and withholding hundreds of documents from federal authorities after leaving the White House in January 2021.

Smith’s office filed a motion on May 24 asking Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, to change the former president’s bail conditions in the case in order to restrict him from making comments that could put FBI agents in danger. The request was in response to Trump’s repeated claims that the agents who raided his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 were prepared to kill him.

Trump’s statements are in reference to an operational order related to the FBI’s raid that was unsealed in court last week, which, as is standard provision for the agency, said that “deadly force” could be used if it became necessary. Smith wrote last week that Trump’s comments on the matter have been “intentionally false and inflammatory statements.”

Trump’s defense team wrote Monday that Smith’s request “unjustly targets President Trump’s campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency” and that the motion “treads new—extremely problematic—ground as a requested prior restraint that is different in kind from the unconstitutional gag orders that prosecutors have sought in New York and Washington, D.C.”

The classified documents case is one of four criminal indictments filed against Trump as he runs for reelection in November. He has had a gag order placed on his public speech related to his hush money case in Manhattan and his federal election subversion case in Washington.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise also accused Smith of “bad-faith behavior” for filing his request to Cannon on the Friday night before Memorial Day weekend. The defense team is asking that federal prosecutors face contempt sanctions and that their motion is struck from the docket.

“Pursuant to the Local Rules, the Special Counsel’s Office was required to meaningfully confer with us regarding those issues prior to filing the Motion,” Trump’s team wrote. “They did not. 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. And that is what we are seeking here.”

Newsweek reached out to Smith’s office via email Monday evening for comment.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference Thursday that claims that FBI agents were prepared to kill Trump during the Mar-a-Lago raid were “false” and “extremely dangerous.” The FBI has also noted that the wording that Trump has taken issue with was included in the operational order for the agents who searched President Joe Biden’s home for classified materials in 2023.

“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,” the FBI said in a statement last week. “No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”