Dozens of attorneys general ask Florida court to stop Jack Smith's “unconstitutional” gag order against Trump

A whopping 24 Republican state attorneys general filed an amicus curiae brief in the case regarding former President Donald Trump's classified documents. Prosecutors asked a Florida court not to grant the gag order request filed last month by special prosecutor Jack Smith.

Republican prosecutors, who expressed concern about the request, called the potential order “presumably unconstitutional,” according to Fox News Digital.

“Free and fair elections in the United States depend on candidates’ ability to speak about important issues of the day. Attempts to stop a candidate from speaking out harm more than just the candidate. They also hurt the voters, who are denied access to crucial information, and the States, which are responsible for managing elections," reads the amicus curiae presented on Monday in the Southern District of Florida, before the district judge Aileen M. Cannon, who presides over the classified documents case.

“And when agents of one candidate seek a court order to muzzle discussion on matters relating to important electoral issues, that restraint raises even more fundamental First Amendment concerns,” prosecutors continued.

An amicus curiae is a document presented to a court by a person or group of people who are not part of the case, but nevertheless have an interest in it.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird led the effort. He was joined by the state attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to Fox News.

“If granted, this request would prevent the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States from speaking out against ‘the prosecution and the criminal trial process that seek to take away his liberty,’” prosecutors insisted. “That prosecution, of course, is led by a Department that President Trump’s political opponent controls.”

The reason for muzzling Trump, according to Smith's team

Smith's team filed the request to gag Trump after the former president and his team claimed, citing a standard search warrant, that the FBI was ready to use "deadly force" during their raid on the mansion in Mar-a-Lago.

For this reason, the Prosecutor's Office asked Judge Cannon to silence Trump, thus preventing the former president from making statements that "pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case."

Smith's team argued in its presentation that Trump's "misleading" claims cited a standard FBI operating procedure that specifies limiting the use of force to emergency situations.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, this same standard was applied to President Joe Biden, who was not charged with improper handling of classified documents even though a special prosecutor determined that the Democratic president had been careless and had irresponsibly and intentionally withheld files dating back to his time as vice president.

The special counsel said he was not recommending charges because a jury was unlikely to find Biden guilty due to his cognitive and mental decline.