The Trump Defense In Florida Continues to Score Political Points By Baiting Special Counsel Smith Into Foolish Efforts

by Shipwreckedcrew

As is made clear below, some efforts being made by the Trump legal team as part of its defense to the indictment in federal court in Florida are far more significant as part of a political strategy than they are as part of the legal defense strategy. The defense teams knows this even if some of Trump’s most vocal defenders in the press can’t tell the difference.

More importantly, however, it seems like SC Smith can’t tell the difference either as he continues to be put in a position to step on a rake — and then he does exactly that. These efforts create “news” cycles in the legal case where the political messaging gets repeatedly conveyed by the Trump campaign, while SC Smith and his troops are left wondering “How did we get ourselves into this?”

This past Friday, the Trump defense team took another opportunity to pump up the outrage meter over the August 8, 2022, search for classified materials at the Mar A Lago resort.

If you follow the intersecting trail of activity crossing back and forth between the legal defense and the political operation, you can easily see in retrospect how the Trump campaign has played SC Smith into a corner — and what it might accomplish in the very near future in having done so.

1. On February 22, 2024, the Trump defense files a motion to suppress under seal, consistent with instructions by the Court based on the demand by by SC Smith that matters involved in the case not be in the public record until the two sides can litigate how much material should be released. The motion was signed and dated by the Trump defense on February 22. SC Smith filed an Opposition, and the Trump defense filed a Reply. All were filed under seal
2. On May 21, 2024, pursuant to the Court’s direction, all the documents were filed on the public docket with limited redactions of certain information. I wrote about this “Assassination Plot Gambit” back in May 25, dispelling some claims raised by others about what the motion to suppress really argued in terms of criticizing the actions of the FBI on August 8 in carrying out the search at MAL.
3. In the immediate aftermath of the motion being unsealed, Trump-favoring reporting focused on the FBI “Ops Plan” and the “preprinted” language in every Ops Plan concerning use of deadly force. The NY trial was still underway when this reporting hit social media, with conservative commentators, so-called “journalists”, and elected officials all piling on with claims that the search warrant — with an “authorization to use deadly force” against Trump, his family, and the Secret Service if they resisted — was in reality an “assassination plan.”
4. When he emerged from the NY courthouse, Trump was careful to make his comments about what he had seen in the reporting — and not about the contents of the motion filed by his Florida lawyers 3 months earlier. This was the pivot from the legal arguments in the motion to suppress over to a political narrative. SC Smith had the choice to ignore it or “rise to the bait” and enter the political arena of combat by narrative.
5. Late on the May 21 and continuing on May 22 and 23, outrage among Trump supporters — in response to the political narrative gaining traction — continued to build with every increasing amplification in conservative media. All sorts of well-intentioned but nonetheless uninformed commentators were suddenly experts in the lawful “use of deadly force,” law enforcement “use of force” policies, and federal law enforcement search warrant protocols.
6. On May 24 SC Smith did “rise to the bait” and late in the day hurriedly filed a motion in the Florida court to modify the “Conditions of Pretrial Release” for FPOTUS Trump, seeking a “gag order” preventing him from making “deceptive and inflammatory” claims about FBI conduct in connection with the MAL raid. Smith meet garden rake — garden rake, meet Smith.
7. The political narrative was then back in the legal arena — SC Smith wanted to take away FPOTUS’s First Amendment rights in the middle of the campaign for POTUS!!!! Smith was doing the bidding of Trump’s political opponent who was responsible for the decision to indict Trump and to authorize a search warrant of MAL, in contrast to working cooperatively to resolve the dispute over documents as had been done with regard to Biden himself.
8. The Florida judge stepped in at this point and poured a bit of cold water on the flames of outrage by giving the Trump defense team three weeks to respond to the motion to modify release conditions.
9. On Friday afternoon, June 14, the Trump defense responded and — as a LEGAL matter — put some distance between the legal defense and the flames of outrage that had driven the political narrative that SC Smith had poured gasoline on with his motion. CONTRARY to the suggestions of some “journalists”, as a legal matter the Trump lawyer focused almost entirely on the factual and legal insufficiencies of the motion filed by Smith — as it should have — and nearly ignored completely the “outrage” over the MAL search and the conduct of the FBI. It went so far in this direction that it captioned the filing “Opposition to Motion for Gag Order.”

Lost in the middle of this circus side-show was the unsealing of some much more consequential motions filed by all the defendants in the MAL case. Some of these issues have been raised in open court during hearings in the past few weeks, but the written motions themselves —to dismiss for “spoilation of evidence” among other things — provide much greater clarity on some of the problems. They explain why the Florida judge vacated all the dates leading up to the trial and the trial date itself. There are disputes over discovery and the handling of evidence seized during the MAL search that — if the defense is correct — call into question the viability of continuing with the “classified documents” charges in this case. Explaining the issues raised in those motions — very complicated — will need to wait for another day.

In opposing the “gag order” motion, the Trump defense focuses its argument on the implications of the motion on Trump’s First Amendment rights, his rights to political free speech in the middle of the campaign, and his right to criticize the governmental actors who are responsible for and involved in the effort to prosecute him on charges he claims were brought to keep him from running.

SC Smith’s motion had used five examples of comments in the aftermath of the May 21 unsealing of the motion to suppress as justification for curtailing Trump’s right to comment on the case.

1. A May 21 Truth Social post by FPOTUS Trump raising the issue that was being “reported” on while was in the NY courtroom — and included this: “Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-

   a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.”

2. A May 23, 2024 campaign email that stated that it had been “revealed,” through the unsealing of President Trump’s suppression motion, “that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid

   in Mar-a-Lago.” The email went on to say — purportedly quoting Trump — “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” This message is the closest cited by SC Smith to adopting the “assassination plan” narrative that emerged from the flames of outrage political narrative. SC Smith called this message “deceptive and inflammatory” and pinned it on FPOTUS Trump directly.

3. A May 23, 2023 Truth Social post substantially similar to (1), but with FPOTUS Trump saying in addition that the USSS “thought [they] might be ‘in the line of fire.’”
4. A May 21, 2024 “X” post attributing to Steve Bannon the claim that “the Mar-

   a-Lago FBI classified document search was ‘an attempted assassination’ by Joe Biden on Trump and his associates.”

5. A May 25, 2024 Truth Social post by FPOTUS Trump that was largely duplicative of aspects of (1) and (3), and correctly states: “Biden’s DOJ Authorized Use Of Deadly Force Against President Trump In Mar-a-Lago Raid.”

To understand why the Trump defense responded the way it did — which I cover next — it is necessary to keep in mind that the defense is addressing an audience of one — a federal district judge who was once a federal prosecutor in that Florida court. A response that parroted the political narrative that arose on and after May 21 is not a legal response. SC Smith asked for the conditions of pretrial release to be modified, and the response needed to address the Bail Reform Act under which the conditions were imposed, the implications of the change in conditions being proposed, and the factual and legal basis made by SC Smith in his motion.

Reflecting a smart defense team, the Opposition begins with an emphasis on the First Amendment and electoral implications of Smith’s request, not his justification:

 
The Opposition next touches BRIEFLY on the circumstances of the execution of the warrant, calling it “unprecedented” — which no one disagrees with. Included in the comments about the warrant execution is the following:

There were no conceivable safety risks associated with the raid in light of the existing security at Mar-a-Lago, which is undertaken by the Secret Service and other security personnel. Nevertheless, in connection with this unprecedented violation of a former Commander-In-Chief’s home, the Operations Order relating to the raid indicates that the FBI elected to apply its “Use Of Deadly Force” policy.

As for expressing outrage over the circumstances of the “Raid at Mar A Lago,” that’s just about it in terms of what the Opposition has to say. That doesn’t quite scream “Attempted Assassination Plan” now does it?

The Opposition follows that with sections on “Release Conditions,” “Sealing Orders,” “Bail Reform Act,” and “First Amendment and Political Speech.” This is the “Briar Patch” that Trump’s Defense was happy to have been thrown into by SC Smith’s motion because it provides a political narrative that can be hammered home in a legal arena — unlike the “assassination attempt” narrative that would just sound idiotic in a courtroom if the Trump defense tried to defend it as substantively accurate.

But it was the “assassination attempt” narrative that had prompted SC Smith’s motion, so the Opposition had to address the 5 instances where that narrative was raised, listed above, that SC Smith claimed justified his motion to impose restrictions on FPOTUS Trump’s free speech rights.

If the Trump defense really intended to advance the assassination narrative as factual, this would have been the point where it embraced them and gave a full-throated endorsement to the conservative “journalists” who had fanned the flames of outrage over just a few weeks earlier.

In responding to the 5 instances, the Trump defense addressed 1, 3, and 5 in largely the same fashion. These are the Truth Social posts and the Trump campaign email that comment in one fashion or another on the FBI’s method of executing the search and the portion of the Ops Plan discussing the “deadly force” policy. They include the “Biden locked and loaded” comment, and the variations of the “FBI authorized to use deadly force policy” comments.

But the only response made by the Trump legal team is that the comments accurately quoted the the policy as set forth in the Ops Plan. In that way the Opposition states that they:

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