The judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents in his Florida home has again reprimanded special counsel Jack Smith’s team for its tactics – this time over a request for an injunction preventing Trump from to repeat baseless claims that FBI agents conducting a search at Mar-a-Lago last year were authorized to kill him.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Kanon rejected the request for a gag order Tuesday, as she issued another stark warning to prosecutors that they must make more concerted efforts in dialogue with Trump’s counsel before taking disputes to court.
“The court finds the special counsel’s pro forma ‘award’ [with the defense] completely lacking in substance and professional civility,” wrote Cannon, a Trump appointee. “It should go without saying that meaningful transfer is not a perfunctory exercise.”
Cannon did not rule out granting the request in the future, but she said prosecutors would need to further pursue Trump’s side on the issue before raising the case again. She also questioned Smith’s claim of urgency in filing the silence order, noting that prosecutors filed it on a “non-urgent” basis. It was filed on the Friday evening before Memorial Day weekend, prompting Trump’s lawyers to complain they were being rushed.
In addition, Cannon appeared to fault Smith’s lawyers for describing the position Trump’s lawyers had taken on the proposed gag order. The judge suggested that prosecutors had relegated Trump’s response to “editorial footnotes,” rather than merely reciting it neutrally in court. She instructed both parties to provide her with more details in the future about their efforts to resolve such disputes and to do so “in objective terms.”
Although the judge appeared irritated by the prosecutors’ actions, she denied a request from Trump’s defense to impose sanctions on the prosecutor for allegedly ignoring court rules and her previous orders. However, Cannon said this was possible if her statements were not adhered to.
“Failure to comply with these requirements may result in sanctions,” the judge wrote Tuesday morning in the brief order posted to the South Florida federal court’s online docket.
A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment on the judge’s order.
Prosecutors have indicated they had to move quickly on the silence request because of a series of incendiary public statements by Trump alleging that FBI officials authorized his killing during the court-ordered raid on Mar-a-Lago in May 2022. The claim stems from the inclusion of a policy regarding the use of deadly force included in the operations plan given to officers prior to the search.
Current and former FBI officials have said the policy is standard, included in virtually all such operations plans, and is intended to limit — not broaden — the use of force. Additionally, they noted that the operation was coordinated with the Secret Service, which is responsible for monitoring Trump and his residences, and that it was deliberately planned at a time when Trump was out of town.
Prosecutors argued that Trump’s claims endangered the lives of FBI agents who participated in the search.
Cannon, the judge who returned the brush to Smith’s prosecutors on Tuesday, has had a testy relationship with those lawyers. They often appear to fret over her willingness to accept some of Trump’s arguments and have shown some impatience with the slow pace of the case, which was filed against Trump last June and currently has no scheduled trial date.
Last week, during a hearing in Cannon’s courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida, the judge urged prosecutor David Harbach to “just calm down” as he argued against claims of prosecutorial misconduct made in the case .
It is unclear whether prosecutors expected that filing the gag request on Friday would immediately stop Trump from making similar statements. If so, it didn’t work out: Trump’s campaign released several fundraising emails over the weekend, including one that said President Joe Biden was “authorizing deadly force on my home.”
There is no evidence that Biden was involved in authorizing the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago or setting its parameters.
