Special Counsel Jack Smith Seeks Partial Gag Order After Trump’s False Assassination Claims About FBI Search

deadline.com:

Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking a federal judge to issue a partial gag order restricting Donald Trump from falsely claiming that FBI agents who searched his Mar-A-Lago estate in 2022 were part of a plot to assassinate him.

Smith’s team asked Judge Aileen Cannon to “take steps immediately to halt this dangerous campaign to smear law enforcement.” Trump has posted repeatedly on social media that the FBI was “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” His comments were based on a filing in his criminal case on charges that he withheld government-owned classified documents and obstructed efforts to retrieve them.

The filing was a standard form that outlined the Justice Department’s use-of-force policy in the search. It was amplified by right-wing media, including Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, but refuted by other outlets, including Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who reported that the standard policy also was used in the search of President Joe Biden’s home, along with other searches.

In their filing, Smith’s team wrote that “the FBI used a form that contains standard and unobjectionable language setting out the Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy, which prohibits the use of deadly force except ‘when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.’ … The inclusion of that policy is routine practice to restrict the use of force, and it is attached to countless warrants across the country.