Jack Smith has a new request for Aileen Cannon

Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to urgently grant his request to thwart what he called “foreseeable danger to law enforcement” posed by former President Donald Trump.

Smith filed a motion last month seeking to modify the conditions of Trump’s release by preventing him from speaking about law enforcement related to his federal classified documents case, also known as a “gag order.” The move came days after Trump suggested that the FBI hoped to assassinate him during the August 2022 raid of his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

In a court filing on Friday, Smith urged Cannon, a Trump appointee frequently accused of bias favoring the former president, to allow his request while citing a new piece of evidence to support his case. The special counsel claimed that a Trump supporter’s alleged recent threat to an FBI agent meant that the danger posed by the ex-president is “imminent.”

“Statements that present a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents working on this case pose a significant and imminent threat to the integrity of these criminal proceedings,” Smith writes in the filing.

The special counsel’s filing then cites a June 11 incident involving a Texas man who allegedly contacted and threatened an FBI agent working on an investigation of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden.

“Just last week, a supporter of Trump called an FBI agent associated with the Hunter Biden case and claimed that, if Trump wins reelection, FBI agents will be thrown in jail; and if he does not win, the agents will be “hunt[ed] down” and “slaughter[ed]” in their own homes, after which “[w]e’re going to slaughter your whole f***ing family,” writes Smith.

“No court would tolerate another defendant deliberately creating such immediate risks to the safety of law enforcement, and this Court should not wait for a tragic event before taking action in this case,” he adds.

Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Friday night.

Trump’s legal team claims that Smith’s proposed order is designed to “restrict President Donald Trump’s campaign speech as the first presidential debate approaches at the end of this month.”

The former president’s lawyers have also claimed that Smith is secretly working as a “campaign surrogate” for Biden in a motion asserting that he was illegally appointed to investigate Trump by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Cannon on Friday held a hearing on the motion and reportedly appeared skeptical of arguments made by both Trump’s team and prosecutors from Smith’s office.

The judge’s decision to hold a hearing at all was heavily criticized by some legal experts who say that Trump has no valid legal basis for challenging Smith’s appointment. Critics have also raised concerns over Cannon’s ruling to allow outside groups to weigh in on the matter.