Prosecutor in the classified documents case of Donald Trump clashed with the judge Monday as he was skeptical questioning a request to bar the former president from threatening comments about law enforcement agents involved in the investigation.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team is seeking to make as a condition of Trump’s freedom pending trial a prohibition on remarks that could endanger agents participating in the case. Prosecutors say those restrictions are necessary after Trump falsely claimed last month that the FBI was prepared to kill him when it searched his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, for classified documents two years ago.
But prosecutor David Harbach, a member of Smith’s team, encountered immediate pushback from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, whose handling of the case has generated intense scrutiny.
The judge questioned Harbach about how she could fashion an order that did not run afoul of Trump’s First Amendment rights and whether prosecutors could prove a direct link between Trump’s comments and actions that might then follow.
“There still needs to be a correlation between the alleged, dangerous comments and the risk” to public safety, she said.
At one point, as he tried despite frequent interruptions from Cannon to rattle off the multiple rationales that he said existed for speech restrictions on Trump, a visibly exasperated Harbach noted acidly that “I’ve got one reason out so far.”The comment drew a rebuke from Cannon, who said, “Mr. Harbach, I don’t appreciate your attitude.”
She said that if he could not behave in a more professional manner, one of his colleagues could take over.
Read the full story from the Associated Press
