Judge Rejects Attempt to Limit Trump’s Statements That May Put Officers at Risk in Classified Records Case

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida on Tuesday denied prosecutors’ request to bar the former president from making public statements that could endanger law enforcement agents participating in the prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said in her order that prosecutors didn’t give defense lawyers adequate time to discuss the request before it was filed Friday evening. She denied the request without prejudice, meaning prosecutors could file it again.

Special counsel Jack Smith said the request was necessary because of several “intentionally false and inflammatory statements” that Trump made recently about the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida in August 2022.

Trump said the FBI agents who searched his estate were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was referring to the disclosure in a court document that the FBI, during the search, followed a standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search 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.”