Special counsel Jack Smith compared himself to Thomas à Becket, an Archbishop of Canterbury, in a court filing as he seeks a gag order against former President Donald Trump.
Smith’s filing referenced a historical incident involving King Henry II, drawing parallels to Trump’s rhetoric.
Trump has criticized Smith and the gag order, calling him “deranged” and a “Trump-hating prosecutor.”
Special counsel Jack Smith says Donald Trump deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents.
Federal Judge Beryl Howell claims the government has shown Donald Trump has “committed criminal violations"… https://t.co/bZ3KKQ0uY0 pic.twitter.com/DauQYzJ0mw
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“Repeated attacks are often understood as a signal to act—just as King Henry II’s remark, ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ resulted in Thomas à Becket’s murder,” wrote the Justice Department’s team of attorneys.
The DOJ is arguing that the gag order is necessary to prevent attacks on the prosecutor, his family, and witnesses.
Smith’s office argued, “There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the prosecutor and his family, and…target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility.”
The DOJ team insisted that Judge Chutkan’s gag order was “well-supported factual findings, narrowly tailored to advance a compelling interest, and more than sufficiently clear to provide the defendant with fair notice of how to conduct himself.”
“In particular, the Order leaves the defendant free to do virtually everything that he has claimed, throughout the litigation, that he must be able to do to run for office while defending himself in court,” claimed the DOJ attorneys.
“And the distinctions it draws between criticizing the policies of a political rival or describing the prosecution as politically motivated, on the one hand, and targeting trial participants or their expected trial testimony, on the other, is readily comprehensible, continued Smith’s team.
“The Order should be affirmed,” demanded he lawyers.
Smith’s team emphasized that “The defendant has recently resumed targeting the Special Counsel’s family while the order has been administratively stayed.
The appellate court is set to hear oral arguments on the matter this week, with Trump’s legal team claiming the gag order is excessively broad.
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