In an angry court filing, #Trump’s lawyers pushed back hard against the request by the office of the #SpecialCounsel, #JackSmith, to revise Trump’s conditions of release by forbidding him to make any public comments that might endanger federal agents working on the prosecution.
On Fri, Smith’s team requested …a limited #GagOrder on #Trump, prompted by what it called “grossly misleading” social media posts Trump made last wk falsely claiming that the #FBI had been authorized to kill him when agents searched #MarALago….
Trump’s stmnts were based on a recently unsealed order for the search that contained boilerplate language spelling out that the use of deadly force could be used only in case of emergency, a standard provision applied to all FBI searches.
The #DOJ policy statement on when officers can use #LethalForce —misrepresented by Trump & his supporters as proof of an assassination plot at #MarALago —was also in the paperwork for the consensual search the #FBI conducted of #POTUS Biden’s Wilmington home, looking for #ClassifiedDocuments.
If you think it's wild that #Nauta pointed up at security cameras in footage because he and #trump talked about how to avoid them, wait until you read the #indictment and learn that trump also asked nauta to delete the earlier footage after #MerrickGarland served a #subpoena for the tapes.
« That this case will not likely see the light of day in a courtroom before the election is just remarkable:
“Once #Trump realized that security cameras at #MarALago could capture his employees moving classified government information that officials were attempting to retrieve, he allegedly ensured that they would avoid the cameras when moving boxes” »
4 months after the #FBI raided #MarALago, Trump’s attys discovered 4 docs marked #classified in his personal bedroom.
That revelation was among several cited by US District Judge Beryl Howell in a newly unsealed 2023 opinion that found prosecutors had presented compelling #evidence that #Trump#knowingly stashed #NationalSecurity docs in his home & then tried to conceal them when the #DOJ tried to retrieve them.
Throughout the opinion, Howell — who was chief judge of the Washington, DC federal district court at the time — described w/varying degrees of incredulity how 4 documents w/ classification markings could have been discovered in #Trump’s private quarters months after prosecutors had subpoenaed them & the #FBI conducted its own exhaustive search of the property.
Related: Chief Judge Boasberg denied#Trump “body man” #WaltNauta’s request to transfer some #GrandJury materials from DC to #Florida, says #Nauta failed to make specific case.