Special Counsel Jack Smith said ex-President Donald Trump was “caught potentially violating” his terms of release, citing a video in which a Trump surrogate claimed he purchased a firearm.
Two weeks ago, Smith’s team filed a motion for a limited gag order, but late Friday, a new motion in support of that proposed order responded to opposition from Trump attorneys and cited a raft of more recent events to underscore the urgency — including his now-infamous remarks about General Mark Milley. and his attacks on the judge and others.
In that same filing to Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan, Smith raised the possibility that Trump could have his release-pending-trial status revoked over his apparent attempt to purchase a firearm.
Smith wrote “The defendant should not be permitted to obtain the benefits of his incendiary public statements and then avoid accountability by having others—whose messages he knows will receive markedly less attention than his own—feign retraction.”
Then in a footnote to that complaint, Smith pointed out the potential violation:
The defendant recently was caught potentially violating his conditions of release, and tried to walk that back in similar fashion. In particular, on September 25, the defendant’s campaign spokesman posted a video of the defendant in the Palmetto State Armory, a Federal Firearms Licensee in Summerville, South Carolina. The video posted by the spokesman showed the defendant holding a Glock pistol with the defendant’s likeness etched into it. The defendant stated, “I’ve got to buy one,” and posed for pictures with the FFL owners. The defendant’s spokesman captioned the video Tweet with the representation that the defendant had purchased the pistol, exclaiming, “President Trump purchases a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!” The spokesman subsequently deleted the post and retracted his statement, saying that the defendant “did not purchase or take possession of the firearm” (a claim directly contradicted by the video showing the defendant possessing the pistol). See Fox News, Trump campaign walks back claim former president purchased Glock amid questions about legality (Sept. 25, 2023), https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-walks-back-claim-former-presidentpurchased-glock-amid-questions-about-legality (accessed Sept. 26, 2023). Despite his spokesperson’s retraction, the Defendant then re-posted a video of the incident posted by one of his followers with the caption, “MY PRESIDENT Trump just bought a Golden Glock before his rally in South Carolina after being arrested 4 TIMES in a year.”
The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so. It would be a separate federal crime, and thus a violation of the defendant’s conditions of release, for him to purchase a gun while this felony indictment is pending. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(n).
Multiple Trump surrogates confirmed that he had indeed purchased the weapon — then later deleted or otherwise memory-holed those confirmations.
Watch the video above.
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