Prosecutors ask Judge Aileen Cannon to block Trump from statements endangering law enforcement

Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida asked a federal judge on Friday to block the former president from making public statements that pose “a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” investigating and prosecuting the case.

The request comes after the former president earlier this week falsely claimed that the Biden administration authorized the FBI to use deadly force. The Trump campaign claimed in a fundraising email that President Joe Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out” during a search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents.

Prosecutors said that agents acted “in an appropriate and professional manner, subject to the Department of Justice’s standard use-of-force policy” and argued that Trump’s claims posed a threat to law enforcement agents.

“Trump’s repeated mischaracterization of these facts in widely distributed messages as an attempt to kill him, his family, and Secret Service agents has endangered law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings,” prosecutors wrote. “A restriction prohibiting future similar statements should therefore be modified to prohibit similar communications going forward.”

This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records that had been stored in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., after they were moved to a storage room on June 24, 2021. Trump is facing 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents according to an indictment unsealed Friday, June 9, 2023.Justice Department via AP file

In making the allegations, Trump and his campaign appeared to be citing recently unsealed court filings related to the 2022 search. The filings showed the judge overseeing the case questioned how the former president could not have noticed that he had highly sensitive documents in his bedroom.

Neither a campaign spokesperson for Trump nor his attorneys immediately responded to NBC News’ requests for comment on Friday night.