Judge rejects gag order on Trump in Florida documents criminal case

[May 29, 2024]  By Sarah N. Lynch

(Reuters) -A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a request by prosecutors to issue a gag order barring Donald Trump from making inflammatory comments about law enforcement, after his campaign falsely claimed the FBI had been authorized to assassinate him when it searched his Florida resort for classified U.S. documents.

Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rebuffed Special Counsel Jack Smith's motion to modify the former president's conditions of release as he awaits trial on charges of mishandling classified material. Smith had said Trump's "false and inflammatory" comments about the FBI could subject the agency, as well as and trial witnesses, to threats, violence or harassment.

Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020, wrote that Smith should have meaningfully conferred with Trump's lawyers before making the gag order request. Instead, the judge wrote, the special counsel's conferral was "wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy."

It is one of four criminal cases Trump faces as he continues campaigning as the Republican challenger to Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.

Trump's lawyers had opposed Smith's request and sought sanctions against the prosecutors, arguing that they had engaged in bad faith behavior by filing the motion to the judge on a Friday night before a three-day holiday weekend, not giving the defense team sufficient notice to discuss the matter.

Cannon declined the request for sanctions, but threatened to impose them if future motions do not follow local court rules, which she said require "meaningful, timely and professional conferral."

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 federal counts charging him with retaining classified national security records at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving the presidency in 2021 and obstructing the Justice Department's efforts to retrieve them.

On Tuesday, a jury in New York was hearing closing arguments before deciding whether or not to convict Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels to advance his 2016 presidential campaign.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters outside of his criminal trial at New York State Supreme Court in New York, U.S., May 28, 2024. JUSTIN LANE/Pool via REUTERS

Other judges have imposed gag orders on Trump in the hush money case and in a second criminal case pursued by Smith in which the former president is charged with unlawfully trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. Those orders prohibited Trump from making derogatory public comments about jurors, witnesses and court staff.

In the hush money case, Justice Juan Merchan fined Trump $10,000 for running afoul of the gag order 10 times.

Attorney General Merrick Garland this month criticized "unfounded attacks" against the FBI and the Justice Department by Trump's Republican allies, saying such attacks endanger the lives of agents and prosecutors.

In the request to Cannon, Smith and two other prosecutors on his team said that Trump's comments about the FBI's August 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago home ran contrary to what happened and distort FBI policy. They said the FBI "took extraordinary care" to carry out a court-approved search warrant "unobstructively and without needless confrontation." They said the search was carried out when Trump and his family were not at the property.

FBI policy prohibits the use of deadly force, except in cases in which an agent has a reasonable belief that a subject poses an "imminent danger of death or serious physical injury," they added.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

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