‘This is bad-faith behavior, plain and simple,’ President Trump’s attorneys have alleged, asking the court to sanction special counsel Jack Smith and his team.
Former President Donald Trump filed a court motion on Monday, urging the judge overseeing his classified documents case to reject special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a gag order and to impose sanctions on Smith and all government attorneys involved in the decision. Trump's attorneys argued against Smith's recent plea for Judge Aileen Cannon to silence the former president, citing potential harm to law enforcement after Trump criticized the use of "deadly force" during the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago property in 2022.
The emergence of an operations plan for the raid, which mentioned the potential use of deadly force and quoted standard government policy, prompted Trump's campaign to accuse the Department of Justice (DOJ) of being prepared to kill him. In response, Smith's team sought a gag order. Trump's attorneys objected, citing procedural flaws such as a lack of meaningful discussion with defense counsel and insufficient evidence of the alleged safety risks.
In their filing, Trump's legal team criticized Smith for not conferring with defense counsel and accused him of engaging in "extraordinary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional censorship." They also contended that Smith's team failed to provide concrete evidence of the supposed safety risks to law enforcement.
Trump's attorneys labeled the request for a gag order as "bad-faith behavior," asserting that there was no justification for rushing to file it on Friday night.
0 Iruzkinak