Jack Smith Cites Medieval Murder as He Seeks Donald Trump Gag Order

Federal prosecutors have asked an appeal court to impose a gag order on Donald Trump after he attacked special counsel Jack Smith and his family in a speech last week.

In their filing, prosecutors cited Henry II's reputed words before four of his knights killed Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket.

"Repeated attacks are often understood as a signal to act—just as King Henry II's remark, 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?' resulted in Thomas à Becket's murder," the filing submitted by Smith and five of his Justice Department attorneys explains.

Henry II was reputed to have made the remark from his castle in Normandy in 1170, leading four of his knights to travel to England and kill Thomas à Becket.

By making the historical parallel, prosecutors want to show the alleged danger of Trump's criticism of special counsel Jack Smith, at Trump campaign rallies, even if, like Henry II, the former president doesn't directly call for violence.

Smith is leading the prosecution case in Trump's election interference case and is a frequent target of the former president at campaign rallies.

In their filing on Tuesday, the prosecutors ask the appeal court to reimpose a gag order that was placed on Trump by Tanya Chutkan, the U.S. district judge in Washington D.C. overseeing Trump's election interference case.

"There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the prosecutor and his family, and...target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility," the federal prosecutors wrote in their submission to the Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals lifted the gag order while it hears the case taken by Trump, who wants the gag order removed completely.

The appeals court is set to hear oral arguments on the gag order next week.

The former president was indicted on four counts in Washington D.C. for allegedly working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the runup to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

It is one of four criminal cases that Trump is facing while he campaigns as frontrunner in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. He has also pleaded not guilty to charges in the other cases and has repeatedly said that they form part of a political witch hunt. Newsweek sought email comment on Tuesday from Donald Trump's attorney.

In a brief last week, Trump's legal team told the appeals court that Chutkan's gag order had been "sweepingly overbroad."

In response, Smith's office wrote in their filing on Tuesday that Chutkan's order was grounded on "well-supported factual findings, narrowly tailored to advance a compelling interest, and more than sufficiently clear to provide the defendant with fair notice of how to conduct himself."

"In particular, the Order leaves the defendant free to do virtually everything that he has claimed, throughout the litigation, that he must be able to do to run for office while defending himself in court," prosecutors wrote. "And the distinctions it draws between criticizing the policies of a political rival or describing the prosecution as politically motivated, on the one hand, and targeting trial participants or their expected trial testimony, on the other, is readily comprehensible. The Order should be affirmed."

"The defendant has recently resumed targeting the Special Counsel's family while the order has been administratively stayed," they wrote and included a link from the C-SPAN TV station to Trump's campaign speech in Claremont, New Hampshire on November 11.

In that speech, Trump said Smith is "deranged" and a "Trump-hating prosecutor," and that "his wife and family despise me much more than he does."

Ranking the Smith family's dislike of him, Trump said Jack Smith is "about at 10" and his family is "about a 15 on a scale of 10."

"The Trump-hating prosecutor in the case, his wife and family despise me much more than he does and I think he's about a ten," he said. "They're about a 15, on a scale of 10...He's a disgrace to America."

Tuesday's submission also mentions Trump's previous social media comment on the Truth Social website, in which he wrote: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" Prosecutors said it may be linked to a death threat that was made against Chutkan this past summer.

"That episode was part of a pattern, stretching back years, in which people publicly targeted by the defendant are, as a result of the targeting, subject to harassment, threats, and intimidation," prosecutors told the appeals court.