Main: An aerial view of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., photographed Aug. 31, 2022 (AP Photo/Steve Helber/File). Right inset: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The Justice Department under the Trump administration asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Friday to dismiss, for a second time, an emergency request from current and former FBI agents seeking clarification of her orders related to the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
In a 20-page motion to dismiss, Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter and Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones characterized the agents’ renewed filing as based on “nothing more but conjecture, fear-mongering, and an apparent motive to delay.”
Cannon initially removed the agents’ request from the docket after finding that it violated a local rule. Their attorneys returned last week with a revised motion that complied with the court’s requirements.
The agents, who describe themselves as “experts in the handling of classified information,” again said they want to testify in the DOJ’s “grand conspiracy” investigation about the contents of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Mar-a-Lago. At the same time, they said they need assurance that doing so would not breach Cannon’s order prohibiting disclosures about Volume II.
The Trump-appointed judge permanently sealed Smith’s report after dismissing the indictment against then-candidate Trump. Cannon concluded that Smith’s actions as a “private citizen” special counsel were invalid because his appointment was unlawful.
Smith did not discuss Volume II during his public testimony, citing Cannon’s orders that barred him from doing so.
The FBI agents—many of whom say they were “abruptly and unlawfully fired” by FBI Director Kash Patel following his return from the Olympic Games—also say they could face “court-imposed sanctions” and potentially be “held in contempt” unless Cannon clarifies the scope of her order.
The DOJ countered that the witnesses’ “hypothetical fears that they may be questioned about Volume II” amount to “fear-mongering” over the “possibility or risk of future harm.” The department said the motion was improper and failed to establish standing.
“[I]n the guise of seeking clarification, the Witnesses actually seek to chip away at this Court’s straightforward prohibition against the disclosure of Volume II and the improperly derived information and conclusions contained in the so-called Special Counsel Report,” the DOJ wrote. It described Smith’s case as an “unlawful and since dismissed prosecution.”
The filing also accused the witnesses of trying to “forestall—even dictate—what questions the grand jury can ask of them and to publicly telecast the details of those protected proceedings.” Such requests, the department said, “alone are extraordinary.”
Although the FBI agents have said they “cannot rely on DOJ’s assertions” regarding what Cannon’s order permits, the department urged the judge not to authorize “free sneak previews or negotiations about what the grand jury may or should ask.”
The post Trump DOJ calls on Judge Cannon to throw Mar-a-Lago FBI agents’ ‘fear-mongering’ out of her court first appeared on Law & Crime.
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