Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is calling for a court order barring Donald Trump from spouting false claims that President Joe Biden was "locked and loaded" and ready to have FBI agents kill him when they searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents he had stashed there.
Smith filed court papers in Florida late Friday asking Judge Aileen Cannon to order Trump to cease making dangerous claims falsely suggesting that FBI agents were "complicit in a plot to assassinate him."
Trump's statements this week put FBI agents involved in the case at risk of "threats, violence, and harassment," said Smith's filing.
Trump earlier this week said that the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago in 2022 were "authorized to shoot me" and and that the president was "locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger."
Smith called on Cannon in the court filing "to make clear that [Trump] may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case."
The warning 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," it added.
Trump has indicated FBI agents who found a trove of classified documents he had taken from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago were secretly plotting to kill him.
In fact agents were operating under standard protocol in which they're authoritized to use deadly force if a situation demands it. They searched Mar-a-Lago while Trump was not on the premises.
The FBI said in a statement to the Associated Press that agents "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. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.
But Trump declared in a fundraising email Wednesday: "It's just been revealed that Biden's DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know that they're just itching to do the unthinkable."
The claim has also been peddled by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and hard-right former White House aide Steve Bannon on his podcast, among other Trump supporters.
"The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light," Greene wrote on X.
Trump's lawyers are reportedly opposed to blocking Trump's claims. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
