Public outrage following the release of shocking details related to the FBI's unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago will not go away despite the best efforts of some to describe the search as “standard operating procedure.”
The scandal continues to put the Justice Department on its heels. After court documents showed the potentially dangerous situation created by the presence of two armed federal law enforcement agencies at the former president's sprawling Palm Beach estate that day, both Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, made public statements in an attempt to downplay the FBI. inclusion of deadly force language in FBI attack plan.
But Republicans aren't mollified by the DOJ's assurances that it followed “standard operating procedure” or the baseless claims that the lethal force policy was also at play during the consensual searches of Joe Biden's home in 2023. And it appears that U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has her own. a set of concerns about how the FBI conducted the search on August 8, 2022.
Next week, Cannon will hold a hearing in his Florida courtroom on Donald Trump's motion to prevent special counsel Jack Smith from using evidence seized during the nine-hour raid at trial. Cannon is presiding over Smith's espionage and obstruction charges against Trump and his two co-defendants.
Smith is on Cannon's bad side for a number of reasons, not the least of which is his office's recent admission that the evidence is not in the same sequence they were following the raid — something Smith's lead prosecutor misrepresented in the courts— and that an unknown number. of classified documents apparently go unaccounted for. (I explained here.)
Trump's lawyers even more so accuse FBI agents exceeded the scope of the warrant by ransacking the bedroom of Mrs. Trump and her son, Barron.
Cannon will also hear Smith's argument to impose a partial gag order barring Trump from making public statements critical of law enforcement officials involved in the case. After being reprimanded by Cannon for violating his rules regarding consulting with the defense before filing any substantive motions, he called Smith's attempt to contact Trump's lawyers Friday evening before the hearing “disappointing.” over Memorial Day weekend, Smith filed a renewed motion. modify the conditions of Trump's release, a better way of saying “gag order,” on May 31.
“The government's request is necessary because of several intentionally false and inflammatory statements made recently by Trump that misrepresent the circumstances under which the FBI planned and executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago ,” Smith wrote. “These statements create a very misleading impression of the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents, falsely suggest that they were complicit in a plot to kill him, and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses in the trial, at the risk of threats, violence and harassment”.
Some of Trump's Social Truth posts about the raid and a campaign email accusing Joe Biden's DOJ of being “locked and loaded” represented the sum total of evidence to bolster Smith's claims of potential danger to to law enforcement.
These baseless accusations follow a pattern. Smith made the same argument, successfully, to Judge Tanya Chutkan last year in the related Jan. 6 case against Trump in Washington. Claiming that Trump's critical comments about public figures such as former Attorney General Bill Barr and former Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom were attacking Trump at the time, posed a “threat” to potential witnesses, Chutkan banned the former president making public statements about witnesses and even Jack Smith himself. (Smith had sought protection under his proposed gag order. Chutkan granted it, but that part of his gag order was overturned by the D.C. Court of Appeals.)
So Smith is up to his same old tricks in less friendly Florida territory. Asking Cannon to ban Trump from speaking about the raid under false pretenses is just one more example of how the Special Counsel's office is trying to protect the American people from learning about this case. He also made the excuse of “threats and harassment” by previously asking Cannon to withhold the names of potential witnesses in the case; she said no.
Smith continues to oppose efforts to reveal other evidence related to the investigation, a mostly losing battle as Cannon repeatedly underscores his commitment to transparency, including a slew of records demonstrating collusion between the Biden White House, the National Archives and the DOJ in the spring of 2021 to build some kind of documentary case against the former president.
Defense attorneys complain they still don't have all the discovery they're entitled to; Some materials from grand jury proceedings have also not been handed over to Washington, the Trump-hating court outside the jurisdiction where most of the investigation took place.
At the same time, the DOJ and Democrats warn that Trump is a threat to “democracy” and the “rule of law.”
It is, of course, quite the opposite. On June 14, Trump's lawyer called Smith's gag order a “shocking display of excess and disregard for the Constitution”:
The requested condition of release would put Smith and his colleagues in a position to seek the arrest and temporary detention of President Trump whenever he said something they disagreed with, including others, statements on the debate stage, on the campaign trail, on social media and potentially even including communications from President Trump's campaign staff. The motion is a bare-bones effort to impose totalitarian censorship of basic political speech, under threat of imprisonment, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump's arguments to the American people about the scandalous nature of this investigation and prosecution .
However, Cannon is unlikely to play on the DOJ's desperate ploy to prevent the former president from continuing to expose this deeply flawed case. Smith isn't worried about what he described as Trump's “set[ting] a target on the backs of FBI agents” — after all, the names of law enforcement in the case are redacted in court documents — but how to protect their sloppy and dishonest prosecutors and investigators of Trump's anger.
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