Cannon denies Jack Smith’s gag order request for 'lack' of 'professional courtesy' to Trump’s team

28 May 2024

Former President Donald Trump has faced partial gag orders in some of the criminal and civil cases against him. But he won't be facing one in special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case.

On Tuesday morning, May 28, Politico's Kyle Cheney reported that Judge Aileen Cannon — the Trump appointee assigned to the case — had denied Smith's request for a limited gag order.

Smith's request followed Trump and some of his allies claiming that FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents in 2022 were part of a plot by President Joe Biden and other Democrats to assassinate the former president. Biden, Trump claimed, authorized the use of "deadly forceful" during the search — a claim that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called out as both false and "extremely dangerous."

Smith's office, in the request, argued that a partial gag order is "necessary because of several intentionally false and inflammatory statements recently made by Trump" that "distort the circumstances under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned and executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago."

But Cannon disagreed with Smith's arguments, saying that Smith's team was "wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy." And she accused Smith's team of requesting the partial gag order without a "meaningful conferral" with Trump's defense.

In an article published in May 28, Law & Crime's Matt Naham describes the battle between Smith's office and Trump's team over that gag order request.

"Prosecutors Jay Bratt and David Harbach said Trump's false 'lethal force' narrative about the Mar-a-Lago raid was 'grossly misleading' and 'inflammatory' to the point of posing an 'imminent danger' and, therefore, should be reined in by Cannon," Naham explains. "Trump's team countered, on Memorial Day, with a motion to strike sharing an exhibit of a tense Friday evening and night email thread where the defense chided prosecutors for sneaking in a gag order request before the holiday weekend without conferring, in a meaningful way, with them beforehand — which, in their view, was a 'blatant violation of the rules' and conveniently dropped days ahead of closing arguments in Trump’s Manhattan hush-money trial."

Trump has faced partial gag orders from Justice Juan Merchan in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s hush money/falsified business records prosecution, Justice Arthur Engoron in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud lawsuit and Judge Tanya Chutkan in Smith's election interference case.

"According to the defense," Naham observes, "Jack Smith's team engaged in 'bad-faith behavior, plain and simple,' by rushing to request an 'unconstitutional' gag order. If Trump's posts were really a danger, the defense said, then the special counsel's office could have brought the issue up in court last week."

Read the full Law & Crime article at this link.

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