The hearing on whether Donald Trump should be allowed to continue falsely claiming that FBI agents had orders to kill him came a day earlier than initially expected. But a day earlier was still a full month after special counsel Jack Smith had first raised the prospect of modifying the former president’s bail conditions, as good an indication as any of how U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon views the prosecution’s claim that Trump’s speech poses an imminent threat to law enforcement.
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Cannon said Monday, scolding government attorney David Harbach when, per NBC News, he got frustrated at the judge’s insistence that the court had already done enough to protect the lives of FBI agents — who a Trump supporter earlier this month allegedly threatened to “slaughter” — by redacting their names from court documents. When Harbach said Cannon should not “wait for tragedy to strike,” she challenged the connection between Trump’s rhetoric and the actions of his followers, saying prosecutors still needed to show an “actual connection between A and B.”
