Prosecutors in the case against Donald Trump for the mishandling of classified documents found in his possession after leaving the White House asked the court on Friday (05/24/2024) to prohibit the former president from making statements that “represent a significant danger” to law enforcement officers involved in the process.
The request is made in response to accusations by the former president of the United States (2017-2021) that the Department of Justice authorized “lethal force” against him in the raid on his mansion in Mar-a-Lago (Florida).
Last Tuesday, the former Republican president suggested in a fundraising email that the language used in the search warrant implied that the current president, Joe Biden, wanted armed agents to take him down.
Furthermore, on his social network, Truth Social, he noted that “Joe Biden’s Department of Justice authorized the FBI to use lethal force” against him.
His campaign influenced this line by adding in another email that “authorizing the use of ‘lethal force’ against a former president of the United States (and main political rival of the party in power) involves the use of the law as an armed arm, for part of the Biden administration, to a whole new level.”
The 12-page motion asks Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon to make clear that the former president’s statements create an “extremely misleading impression” about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents (falsely suggesting that were complicit in a plot to assassinate him) and “expose those officers, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence and harassment.”
Prosecutors wrote in the motion delivered to Cannon, a Trump appointee, that the court has an “obligation” to protect the integrity of this judicial proceeding and that steps should be taken immediately to stop this “dangerous campaign of defamation of the law.”
Trump’s statements caused rejection by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who described the former Republican president’s accusation regarding the search of his mansion last summer as “false” and “extremely dangerous.”
On May 7, Judge Cannon indefinitely postponed the date of that trial pending the resolution of previous litigation, which makes it very unlikely that the process will take place before the November elections.
gs (efe, reuters, ap)
