After holding an unnecessary hearing Friday on the lawfulness of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is holding more hearings this week in Donald Trump’s classified documents case. At one of them, on Monday, she’ll consider whether to stop the former president from making dangerous statements about law enforcement.
The judge is a wild card, and it’s never clear what she’ll do. But whatever happens at the hearing, and however (and whenever) she rules on the issue, Smith’s latest court filing ahead of the hearing is remarkable for highlighting the damning record that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has amassed across several court cases.
“Every court to have examined the issue has recognized the threat caused by the long-standing and well-documented dynamic between Trump’s comments and the predictable response from some of his supporters,” Smith wrote in his filing Friday, citing several rulings from courts in Washington and New York.
Monday’s hearing stems from Trump’s statements falsely suggesting that law enforcement agents who executed the Mar-a-Lago search warrant were out to kill him and his family. “Trump knew that this was false, and he intended that his comments would inflame his listeners; indeed, that was the whole purpose,” the special counsel wrote to Cannon ahead of the hearing.
“Comments like those create an immediate threat to the safety of law enforcement professionals — men and women who dedicate themselves to enforcing the law and protecting the American public every day, and who are entitled to do their work without fear of violent retribution,” added Smith, who asked Cannon to prohibit further statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement professionals involved in the case.”
Smith isn’t formally seeking a gag order but rather wants the judge to restrict the defendant’s statements by modifying his release conditions. As I wrote previously, the special counsel’s success is not guaranteed here, partly because Cannon may latch onto First Amendment concerns and seek more specificity about threats in this case than the special counsel can or will offer. Her comments and questions at the hearing may provide clues about where she’s headed — and whether she’ll stand in contrast to the courts who have taken action to protect the integrity of their proceedings.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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