Left: Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023, at an office of the Department of Justice in Washington. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)/Right: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks Tuesday April 2, 2024, at a rally in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)
In a Wednesday notice filled with examples of vile threats against judges and prosecutors from supporters of Donald Trump, the special counsel said there’s plenty of support for a Mar-a-Lago case gag order that would bar the former president from making statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement professionals.”
Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors have been trying to convince U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that Trump should not be “permitted to lie about FBI agents intending to murder him and his family” in extrajudicial and largely online statements about the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s Truth Social post about “deadly (lethal) force”
Those types of falsehoods posted on Truth Social have inspired the defendant’s closely listening supporters to lash out in the past against the FBI, against judges and prosecutors in his New York criminal hush-money and civil fraud cases, the judge in his Jan. 6 case, and against Fulton County DA Fani Willis, the notice said.
Threats against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg
Vile voicemails left for Trump’s civil fraud trial judge Arthur Engoron
More voicemails left for Engoron
Not only has Trump fundraised off of his Truth Social distortions about the FBI, he’s also well aware of the “Link Between His Statements and His Followers’ Responses” and the fact that gag orders have been issued and upheld in his other cases, Smith’s notice said.
Trump fundraising email
By way of example, the special counsel said it was no coincidence that days after Aug. 8, 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, Ricky Shiffer launched an attack on Cincinnati FBI office and was shot in a standoff with law enforcement.
The attack unfolded after Shiffer repeatedly posted on Truth Social, saying things like “We see the courts are unfair and unconstitutional, all that is left is force” and “patriots are heading to Palm Beach (where Mar A Lago is). I recommend going and being Florida, I think the feds won’t break it up. IF they do, kill them,” attached exhibits said.
Ricky Shiffer’s Truth Social posts
There have been numerous other threats like these, and Trump is on record agreeing that his supporters listen to him like no one else, other exhibits showed.
While Trump’s defense has maintained that Smith’s bid to modify Trump’s bond conditions is an “unconstitutional” and “shocking display of overreach,” the Special Counsel’s Office has repeatedly urged Cannon to act before someone in law enforcement gets killed.
“And just last week, a supporter of Trump called an FBI agent associated with the Hunter Biden case and claimed that, if Trump wins reelection, FBI agents will be thrown in jail; and if he does not win, the agents will be ‘hunt[ed] down’ and ‘slaughter[ed]’ in their own homes, after which ‘[w]e’re going to slaughter your whole f—ing family,’” a June 21 filing from Smith said. “No court would tolerate another defendant deliberately creating such immediate risks to the safety of law enforcement, and this Court should not wait for a tragic event before taking action in this case.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
