Special counsel Jack Smith (left) speaks on Aug. 1, 2023 AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin), former President Donald Trump (right) pictured on May 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Irritated by a late Friday request to bar Donald Trump from falsely saying the feds who raided Mar-a-Lago were authorized to assassinate him, the former president’s lawyers want the Special Counsel’s Office sanctioned for running afoul of local rules and ignoring the judge’s “prior warnings.”
Attorneys Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise, pointing out that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon already told special counsel Jack Smith months ago that “meaningful conferral” with the defense is needed and that “non-compliant notices or unauthorized filings will be stricken,” asked the jurist to “make civil contempt findings” and issue sanctions for “unsupported histrionics.”
Last Friday, prosecutors sought to modify Trump’s conditions of release by asking Cannon to impose a gag order on the defendant, preventing him from posting or otherwise making statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” involved in the Mar-a-Lago probe, feds that may be trial witnesses.
Prosecutors Jay Bratt and David Harbach said Trump’s false “lethal force” narrative about the Mar-a-Lago raid was “grossly misleading” and “inflammatory” to the point of posing an “imminent danger” and, therefore, should be reined in by Cannon.
Trump’s team countered on Memorial Day with a motion to strike sharing an exhibit of a tense Friday evening and night email thread where the defense chided prosecutors for sneaking in a gag order request before the holiday weekend without conferring in a meaningful way with them beforehand — which, in their view, was a “blatant violation of the rules” and conveniently dropped days ahead of closing arguments in Trump’s Manhattan hush-money trial.
“[I]n light of the Office’s blatant violation of Local Rule 88.9 and related warnings from the Court, the Court should strike the Motion, make civil contempt findings as to all government attorneys who participated in the decision to file the Motion without meaningful conferral, and impose sanctions after holding an evidentiary hearing regarding the purpose and intent behind the Office’s decision to willfully disregard required procedures,” the motion said.
More Law&Crime coverage: Jack Smith asks Mar-a-Lago judge to put gag order on Trump after ‘dangerous’ posts claiming DOJ authorized ‘deadly’ force during search, as defense complains about holiday weekend filing
According to the defense, Jack Smith’s team engaged in “bad-faith behavior, plain and simple,” by rushing to request an “unconstitutional” gag order.
If Trump’s posts were really a danger, the defense said, then the Special Counsel’s Office could have brought the issue up in court last week.
“The failure to meaningfully confer is even more troubling in light of the fact that the parties were assembled before the Court on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. The Special Counsel’s Office cites in the motion a May 21, 2024 social media post by President Trump,” the defense said. “If the Office truly believed that President Trump’s constitutionally protected speech posed the type of threat that they claim in the Motion, then they should have discussed the issue with counsel in person rather than raising it via email on a Friday evening two days later.”
Slamming prosecutors’ motion as “unsupported histrionics” rooted in bias and recklessness, Trump’s lawyers sought to punish the special counsel and asked Cannon to set an evidentiary hearing for the purpose of probing the “purpose and intent behind the Office’s decision to willfully disregard required procedures.”
Read the motion to strike and sanctions request here, and an exhibit of the Friday night email thread here.
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