Trump attorneys ask judge to reject gag order request in classified documents case and find prosecutors in contempt

Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys asked a federal judge Monday to reject special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a gag order in the classified documents case and to find the federal prosecutors who wrote the request in contempt.

Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys asked a federal judge Monday to reject special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a gag order in the classified documents case and to find the federal prosecutors who wrote the request in contempt. Smith’s office has requested that the Florida judge overseeing the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, place a gag order on the former president that would limit his ability to publicly talk about law enforcement that searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has repeatedly and misleadingly criticized the FBI for having a policy in place around the use of deadly force during the search – as the bureau does with every warrant it executes. In a blistering court filing late on Memorial Day, attorneys for Trump said that the gag order request was an “extraordinary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional censorship application” to target Trump’s speech as he runs for president. The special counsel “improperly asks the Court to impose an unconstitutional gag order on President Trump … based on vague and unsupported assertions about threats to law enforcement personnel whose names have been redacted from public filings and whose identities are already subject to a protective order,” defense attorneys wrote. The attorneys also said that prosecutors, whome they referred to as “self-appointed Thought Police,” were “seeking to condition President Trump’s liberty on his compliance” with their own views.