‘Going To Slaughter Your Whole F**king Family!’ Blistering New Jack Smith Filing Blames Trump Rants For Threats

Special Counsel Jack Smith detailed specific threats he blames on former President Donald Trump in a blistering new filing seeking new conditions on Trump’s release pending trial.

In August of 2022, the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home kicked off a stream of invective and threats against the FBI and eventually led to Trump’s arrest and arraignment on 37 counts related to violations of the Espionage Act.

On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee — will hold a hearing on  Smith’s motion demanding Trump be gagged from making statements like his false claims President Joe Biden tried to assassinate him with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

The basis for Trump’s claim is standard language in the raid’s operation order that said agents “may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

Smith filed a new brief in response to Trump’s response opposing the order. The filing lists specific threats that Smith traces to Trump’s statements:

As far back as August 2022, the magistrate judge now assigned to this case took notice of the dangerous atmosphere for the FBI when deciding to maintain under seal the bulk of the Mara-Lago search warrant affidavit. In re Search Warrant, 622 F. Supp. 3d 1257, 1263 (S.D. Fla. 2022) (“After the public release of an unredacted copy of the [search warrant] Inventory, FBI agents involved in this investigation were threatened and harassed.”). The magistrate judge further noted that, after the search, there were “increased threats against FBI personnel.” Id. Three days after the search, Trump supporter Ricky Shiffer, armed with an AR-15 and a nail gun, attempted to attack an FBI office in Ohio. See Ex. 1. Hours after Trump posted on his social media platform (Truth Social) about the search on August 8, see Ex. 3, Shiffer also posted on Truth Social, “Kill F.B.I. on sight,” advocated “combat” against the FBI, and stated, “Trump showed us we could still elect,” Ex. 1; see also Ex. 4 (spreadsheet of additional posts). On August 10, Shiffer posted, “When they try to make you fear, hold up a sign saying, ‘We love Trump,’ when they come for you, kill them.” See id. According to search warrant returns on Shiffer’s Truth Social account, Shiffer officially joined Truth Social on August 2, 2022, and in the days preceding his attack on the FBI, he followed Trump’s Truth Social account.

Shiffer’s threats to the FBI were not isolated. Just last week, another of Trump’s supporters was charged with making threats by calling the cell phone number of an FBI agent associated with the Hunter Biden case and claiming that, if Trump does not win the election, FBI agents will be “hunt[ed] down” and “slaughter[ed]” in their own homes, after which “[w]e’re going to slaughter your whole fucking family.” Redacted Criminal Complaint as to Timothy Muller, United States v. Muller, No. 4:24-mj-479, (N.D. Tex. June 14, 2024), ECF No. 11 at 3.

Trump, for his part, has “repeatedly” made “threatening public statements,” including a message of vengeance the day after his initial appearance in court in United States v. Trump, 23- cr-00257 (D.D.C.): “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Ex. 5; see Trump, 88 F.4th at 1010. His rhetoric on social media also contains clear allusions to violence. On September 22, 2023, on Truth Social, the defendant falsely claimed that a witness, the retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had committed treason and intimated that he should be executed. Ex. 5; see Trump, 23-cr-00257, (D.D.C. Sept. 29, 2023) ECF No. 64 at 10.

Trump’s recent posts falsely insinuating that the FBI and DOJ had planned to assassinate him during the search at Mar-a-Lago are even more egregious. Much like Trump’s motion to suppress evidence from that search (ECF No. 566 at 4), which misleadingly omitted the word “only” before “when necessary” in describing the FBI’s policy on the use of deadly force, his response (ECF No. 622 at 8-9) selectively quotes his statements from the assassination allegations, hiding the part of Trump’s statement where he directly and falsely accused “Biden’s DOJ” that “they’re just itching to do the unthinkable” and downplaying the falsity of “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” ECF No. 592-2 at 2. Deploying such knowingly false and inflammatory language in the combustible atmosphere that Trump has created poses an imminent danger to law enforcement that must be addressed before more violence occurs.

The filing also refutes Trump arguments like his team’s claim that the agents involved are already sufficiently protected from threats:

Trump suggests (ECF No. 622 at 7) that the agents in this case face no danger since their names are currently redacted from public filings. That argument ignores that Trump’s former aide twice (after the search and after the June 2023 indictment) disseminated the names of two FBI agents on this case, their dates of birth, their work email addresses, and supposed links to social media accounts of their family members. See Alia Shoaib, An Ex-Trump Aide and Right-wing Breitbart News Have Been Separately Accused of Doxxing [sic] the FBI Agents Involved in the Mar-a-Lago Raid, BUSINESSINSIDER.COM (Aug. 13, 2022), https://www.businessinsider.com/breitbart-trump-aide-doxxing-mar-a-lago-raid-fbi-agents-2022- 8 (cited in In re Warrant, 622 F. Supp. 3d at 1263). Redaction is also an insufficient protection when the agents’ names will necessarily be public when they testify at trial. Nor should Trump receive any credit for merely complying with this Court’s order to redact, given that he gratuitously included FBI agents’ names in exhibits to court filings that he said should be public, see, e.g., ECF Nos. 262 (Motion to Compel) and 566 (Motion to Suppress), and opposed the Government’s efforts to redact them, see, e.g., ECF Nos. 261 and 312.

The brief concludes:

To protect the safety of law enforcement and the integrity of this proceeding, this Court should grant the Government’s motion to modify Trump’s conditions of release.

Special Counsel Smith also filed a brief on Sunday answering questions from Cannon about precedent for the president’s special counsel appointment power.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!