Jack Smith doesn’t “mince his words” in New Aileen Cannon Motion – Legal Analyst

In the wake of Donald Trump’s Florida secret documents case, Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith will not “mince his words” in a new request to Judge Aileen Cannon, MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said Saturday.

Trump is set to go on trial after the Justice Department indicted him on 40 federal charges last June on allegations that after he left the White House in 2021, he unlawfully retained secret documents and obstructed the government from recovering them. Trump’s indictment came after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022. The former president pleaded not guilty and stated that the case was politically motivated.

In a court filing Friday, Smith urged Cannon, a Trump appointee often accused of bias in favor of the former president, to grant his request for a silence order against Trump, citing new evidence to support his case. A special counsel said a Trump supporter’s alleged threats against an FBI agent mean the threat from the former president is “imminent.”

“Statements that pose a significant, direct and foreseeable threat to the integrity of the criminal proceedings to the law enforcement agencies working on this case,” Smith wrote in his filing.

In his filing, Smith cites a June 11 incident involving a Texas man who allegedly contacted and threatened an FBI agent working on the investigation of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.

“Just last week, a Trump supporter called an FBI agent connected to the Hunter Biden case and stated that if Trump wins re-election, FBI agents will be thrown in jail, and if he doesn’t win, the agents will be hunted down.” and “slaughter(ed)” in their own homes, after which “(we) will murder your entire f***ing family,” the special prosecutor wrote. “No court will tolerate another defendant who willfully poses such an immediate threat to the safety of law enforcement, and the Court should not wait for a tragic event to take action in this case.”

In a video posted Saturday to his YouTube channel, Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and frequent Trump critic, discussed Smith’s motion.

“I’ll start with the new motion that Special Counsel Jack Smith just filed, and the only thing I’ll tell him is that he doesn’t mince his words. He’s direct, he’s blunt, he’s relentless… but we’re going to have an honest discussion about whether continued attempts to contain and control Donald Trump with orders of silence make sense, given what we’ve learned, given Donald Trump’s repeated violations of those orders silence,” Kirschner said.

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s spokesman by email for comment.

Kirschner’s comments come after Smith filed a request for a restraining order last month, days after Trump suggested the FBI hoped to murder him during a raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in August 2022 r.

In May, court records were unsealed containing briefing notes about the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid that said, “Department of Justice (DOJ) law enforcement officers may use lethal force if necessary.”

In response, a Trump campaign email was sent to Trump campaign supporters in late May claiming that FBI agents were “authorized to shoot” Trump and “wanted to do the unthinkable” during the raid, while the former president also claimed in Truth Social series posts that the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden authorized his assassination.

In response, the FBI released a statement revealing that Trump’s claims constituted a misrepresentation of the “Law Enforcement Action Order” memo.

“The FBI followed standard protocol during this search, as it does with all search warrants that include a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,” the FBI said in a May 22 statement. “No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no deviation from the norm in this matter.”

On Saturday, Kirschner also questioned the effectiveness of the silence order, pointing out that Trump had been previously subjected to silence orders, which he constantly violated.

“I appreciate the legal analysis because there is no doubt that a silence order should be imposed, but what have we learned from previous silence orders? “Judge (Juan) Merchan issued a silence order, and Donald Trump violated it again and again,” he said.

During Trump’s secret money trial, in which he was convicted of 34 crimes related to falsifying business records, Merchan imposed a silence order on Trump. The former president violated the order and was fined $9,000 for violating the silence order nine times in April, and another $1,000 in early May when a judge warned Trump that future violations of the silence order could land him in jail.

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team says Smith’s proposed order is intended to “limit President Donald Trump’s campaign speeches in connection with the upcoming first presidential debate later this month.”

Additionally, Cannon also held a hearing on the motion on Friday and reportedly appeared skeptical of the arguments presented by Trump’s team and prosecutors in Smith’s office.