Donald Trump is blaming the feds for shunning the Constitution to keep him muzzled.
On Friday, the former president’s attorneys accused special counsel Jack Smith and his team — who accuse him of hoarding classified documents and obstructing their return — of demanding he be gagged by the court without offering “any evidence of threats or harassment resulting from President Trump’s protected speech.”
They chastised the gag order request as an unconstitutional attack on the 2024 presumptive Republican nominee as a way to buttress incumbent President Joe Biden's effort to secure a second term, CNN reports.
The filing reads: “In Jack Smith’s most recent shocking display of overreach and disregard for the Constitution, the Special Counsel’s Office asks the Court to enter an unconstitutional gag order as one of the release conditions on the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election."
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The papers accuse Smith of stooping to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (who they list by name) of seeking "to restrict President Trump’s campaign speech as the first presidential debate approaches at the end of this month.”
Smith sought a request for a gag order on Trump to keep him from spewing unfounded claims that FBI agents carrying out a search at Mar-a-Lago last year were ordered to use lethal force against him.
Trump’s suspicions are based on boilerplate language in FBI policy that reads, “When necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
The statement is standard procedure when FBI agents execute searches. Trump was not at Mar-a–Lago when the agents went there.
“No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter,” the FBI said in a statement.
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected the request, and put Smith and fellow prosecutors on notice that they need to broker better dialogue with Trump’s defense before lodging complaints in the court record.
