🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Judge Aileen Cannon is playing a dangerous game by allowing Donald Trump to make false statements about the FBI, a former prosecutor has said.
Joyce Vance, who served as a U.S. Attorney under former President Barack Obama, warned that a Trump supporter could injure an FBI agent after the presumptive Republican presidential nominee falsely said that the agency was instructed to use lethal force against him during a raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, is overseeing the Mar-a-Lago case, in which special counsel Jack Smith accuses the former president of illegally retaining classified documents, hoarding them at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstructing attempts by federal officials to retrieve them.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He has denied any wrongdoing in the case and has said the documents he retained were personal.
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Monday.
Smith has filed a motion in court seeking to amend Trump's bail conditions so that the Republican can no longer be permitted to make false statements about the FBI.
That followed the unsealing of an FBI search warrant application, which said that agents were trained to use lethal force if necessary. Such language is standard for such applications and also appears on one when FBI agents were seeking to recover presidential papers from President Joe Biden.
Cannon has already received submissions from prosecutors and Trump's lawyers, and she has delayed the bail adjustment request by three weeks while she requests further submissions.
"No one will ever accuse her of dealing with matters in an expeditious fashion. But she plays a dangerous and disingenuous game here. Someone could get hurt in the intervening three weeks," Vance wrote on Sunday in her legal blog, Civil Discourse.
Vance has been a frequent critic of the former president.
"Special counsel Jack Smith has asked Judge Aileen Cannon—again—to bar Trump from making statements that endanger law enforcement in the classified documents case," Vance wrote.
"Trump has been claiming that the FBI was out to assassinate him when it executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. It simply isn't the case."
Vance added that Cannon denied Smith's request on a technicality. Smith refiled the motion on Sunday, and the judge "entered a paperless order directing Trump to file a response on or before June 14 and the government to reply by June 21."
In his motion, Smith also expressed his concern that Trump's comments were putting FBI agents in danger. Newsweek sought email comment from Smith's office on Monday.
Trump said on social-media posts that the FBI agents had been trained by the Biden administration to shoot him. Supporters of the former president, such as Steve Bannon, repeated such claims, according to a motion Smith filed with Cannon on Friday, May 24.
Writing on his Truth Social account, Trump said that the Department of Justice "AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE." In addition, a Trump campaign email said that FBI agents were "authorized to shoot" the Republican, adding that President Joe Biden was "locked & loaded and ready to take me out."
In his motion, Smith requested that Cannon alter Trump's bail conditions so that he is forbidden from making such claims against the FBI, which Smith says puts agents in danger from Trump supporters.
Trump's lawyers, Chris Kise and Todd Blanche, filed a lengthy rebuttal in which they accused Smith and the other prosecutors in the case of trying to silence Trump's free speech. They also want Cannon to sanction Smith and his team for not conferring with the former president's lawyers before filing the motion.
Cannon strongly agreed with them and accused Smith of going against common attorney courtesy in not conferring with them before filing the motion.
fairness meter
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more