Jack Smith Requests Gag Order After Trump Says FBI Agents Were ‘Ready To Take Me Out’

 Special counsel Jack Smith is seeking a gag order against former President Donald Trump after he suggested the FBI was authorized to assassinate him.

The request follows the revelation last week that the FBI was permitted to use “deadly force” in the 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

In response, Trump claimed FBI agents were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

Smith’s team rebuffed such claims in a court filing in the Florida-based classified documents case against Trump.

Federal prosecutors said the statements “falsely” suggested law enforcement agents “were complicit in a plot to assassinate” Trump.

The statements also “expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment,” they added.

Smith’s team asked the court to restrain Trump from making public declarations that pose a serious “danger” to agents participating in the case.

Prosecutors also noted that Trump’s lawyers object to the motion as they “do not believe that there is any imminent danger.”

Neither Trump’s defense team nor Judge Aileen Cannon immediately responded to the request for a gag order.

The FBI has insisted that the bureau was following “standard protocol” in the Mar-a-Lago search that has a policy statement “limiting the use of deadly force.”

Trump’s re-election campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, asserted in a statement that prosecutors were trying to meddle in the 2024 election.

“Hacks and Thugs are obsessed with trying to deprive President Trump and all American voters of their First Amendment rights,” he said.

“Repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election,” Cheung added.

 

Judges have implemented gag orders against Trump in a New York hush-money case and Smith’s 2020 election interference case against the former president.

Trump has maintained his innocence in all of the charges he faces, including in a separate 2020 election interference case in Georgia.

Just one of the four cases — the criminal matter in Manhattan — has gone to trial so far.

Judge Cannon postponed the classified documents trial, which had been set for May 20, and has not selected a new date.