Given recent history, Donald Trump has been hit with so many gag orders, he’s had ample opportunity to familiarize himself with the concept. In fact, the former president’s rhetoric about ongoing court proceedings has been deemed so potentially dangerous, so many times, that a variety of judges have found it necessary to impose limits on what the Republican can say.
The list recently grew when the Republican, as part of his hush-money case, lashed out at a variety of people across the legal system, including likely witnesses and the daughter of the presiding judge. Late Friday, as NBC News reported, special counsel Jack Smith requested a brand new gag order against the suspected felon in a different case.
Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida asked a federal judge on Friday to block the former president from making public statements that pose “a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” investigating and prosecuting the case.
In case anyone needs a refresher, it was nearly a week ago when the former president, referencing the newly unsealed court records, claimed by way of his social media platform that the Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” while executing a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Trump issued an outlandish fundraising appeal soon after, falsely claiming that President Joe Biden was “locked & loaded” and “ready to take me out” during the FBI’s search of his glorified country club.
After the claims were thoroughly and completely discredited, and the FBI itself took the unusual step of issuing a public statement leaving no doubt that the former president and his allies simply had no idea what they were talking about, Trump repeated the claim anyway.
The truth was entirely mundane: The FBI’s relevant paperwork included standard language, used every time the bureau executes a court-approved search warrant. Indeed, when the FBI searched Biden’s home in Delaware as part of a separate search for classified documents, the paperwork included the same phrasing. This obviously does not mean that the Biden administration was “ready to take out” the Democratic incumbent himself.
But this wasn’t just the latest in a seemingly endless list of Trump lies. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference that the former president’s absurd allegation “is false, and it is extremely dangerous,” and it’s worth understanding why.
“The threat of political violence is persistently high, especially in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election. And by spreading this hoax, Trump is fanning the flames, in particular, of anti-government extremism,” a Just Security analysis explained last week.
The piece added, “Conspiracy theories such as the nonsensical assassination plot fuel the extremists’ anti-government paranoia and increase the likelihood of future violence. We should accordingly not be surprised if rightwing extremists interpret Trump’s words as a call to action against the FBI or others.”
With this in mind, Smith isn’t looking to silence Trump altogether, so much as the prosecutor’s office wants U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to limit what the Republican can say in this case that might endanger law enforcement officials for no reason. For his part, the criminal defendant responded to the news with a rather predictable online rant that read in part, “Deranged Jack Smith has asked Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida for a Gag Order on me, so that I cannot talk about all of the Crimes he has committed.” To the extent that reality still has meaning, (a) there’s no evidence of Smith having committed any crimes; (b) this is an absurd description of the special counsel’s actual filing; (c) Trump could, but won’t, acknowledge that his “locked & loaded” claims were obviously false; and (d) I’ll never fully understand the former president’s strange approach to capitalization. Nevertheless, the matter will be in Cannon’s hands. If she sides with the defendant — which is to say, if she sides with Trump again — the special counsel’s office will almost certainly take the matter to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has already demonstrated a willingness to reverse Cannon. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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