Jack Smith Doesn't 'Mince Words' in New Aileen Cannon Motion—Legal Analyst

Amid Donald Trump's classified documents case in Florida, Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith doesn't "mince words" in a new motion to Judge Aileen Cannon, MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said on Saturday.

Trump is due to stand trial after being indicted last June by the DOJ on 40 federal charges, alleging that he illegally retained classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and obstructed the government's efforts to retrieve them. Trump's indictment came after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022. The former president has pleaded not guilty and has said the case is politically motivated.

In a court filing on Friday, Smith urged Cannon, a Trump appointee frequently accused of bias favoring the former president, to allow his request to have Trump under a gag order as he cited a new piece of evidence to support his case. The special counsel claimed that a Trump supporter's alleged threat to an FBI agent meant that the danger posed by the ex-president is "imminent."

"Statements that present a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents working on this case pose a significant and imminent threat to the integrity of these criminal proceedings," Smith wrote in the filing.

Smith's filing cites a June 11 incident involving a Texas man who allegedly contacted and threatened an FBI agent working on an investigation of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden.

"Just last week, a supporter of Trump called an FBI agent associated with the Hunter Biden case and claimed that, if Trump wins reelection, FBI agents will be thrown in jail; and if he does not win, the agents will be 'hunt[ed] down' and 'slaughter[ed]' in their own homes, after which '[w]e're going to slaughter your whole f***ing family,'" the special counsel wrote. "No court would tolerate another defendant deliberately creating such immediate risks to the safety of law enforcement, and this Court should not wait for a tragic event before taking action in this case."

In a video posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday, Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and a frequent Trump critic, discussed Smith's motion.

"Let me start with the new motion that was just filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith and the one thing I will give him is he does not mince words. He is direct, he is blunt, he is unyielding....but we have to have an honest discussion about whether forever trying to restrain, control, Donald Trump with gag orders makes any sense given what we have learned, given Donald Trump's repeated violations of those gag orders," Kirschner said.

Newsweek has reached out to Trump's spokesperson via email for comment.

Kirschner's comments come after Smith filed a motion last month seeking a gag order days after Trump suggested that the FBI hoped to assassinate him during the August 2022 raid of his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

A court filing was unsealed in May showing briefing notes for the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid, which said: "Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice [DOJ] may use deadly force when necessary."

In response, a Trump campaign email was sent to supporters in late May that claimed that FBI agents were "authorized to shoot" Trump and "itching to do the unthinkable" during the raid, while the former president also claimed in a series of Truth Social posts that the DOJ under President Joe Biden had authorized his assassination.

In response, the FBI issued a statement that revealed Trump's claims were a misrepresentation of the "Law Enforcement Operations Order" memo.

"The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force," the FBI said in a May 22 statement. "No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter."

On Saturday, Kirschner also questioned the effectiveness of a gag order, pointing out how Trump has previously had gag orders imposed on him that he has continuously violated.

"I appreciate the legal analysis because there is no doubt a gag order should be imposed, but what have we learned from prior gag orders? Judge [Juan] Merchan put gag orders in place and Donald Trump violated them, over, and over and over again," he said.

Amid Trump's hush money trial in which he was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Merchan imposed a gag order on Trump. The former president violated that order and was fined $9,000 for breaking the gag order nine times in April and was fined another $1,000 in early May as the judge warned Trump that future gag order violations could land him in jail.

Meanwhile, Trump's legal team claims that Smith's proposed order is designed to "restrict President Donald Trump's campaign speech as the first presidential debate approaches at the end of this month."

In addition, Cannon on Friday also held a hearing on the motion and reportedly appeared skeptical of arguments made by Trump's team and prosecutors from Smith's office.