Days after a video went viral on social media showing former US president Donald Trump visiting a gun store and possibly buying a Glock, prosecutors said that he may have “broken the law”.
Prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday that Trump may have broken the law if he did indeed purchase a pistol while he was the target of a federal indictment at a recent campaign rally in South Carolina, he may have broken the law, RT reported.
“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,” the court filing says.
The filing continued: “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.”
Earlier this week, Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 US presidential election, was seen posing with a Glock pistol that had his face etched into it by the owner of a gun store in Summerville, South Carolina.
In the viral video, according to the court filing, Trump said he had “got to buy one” and the campaign staffer who uploaded the video clip on social media wrote, “President Trump purchases a [Glock] in South Carolina!”
Although the staffer later deleted the social media post and clarified that the former US president did not buy or take possession of the firearm, this version of events was questioned by federal prosecutors in the Friday court filing.
The prosecutors noted that the claim was “directly contradicted by the video showing the defendant possessing the pistol.”
The Trump campaign later released a statement, saying: “President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm. He simply indicated that he wanted one.”
In a court filing, prosecutors asked for a gag order to be placed on Trump as part of a federal prosecution as he impeded the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.
The former president, the court filing claims, could be tampering with the potential witnesses or the juror pool by making “disparaging and inflammatory attacks” about people involved in criminal investigations of Trump.
He has previously referred to Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading investigations into Trump’s alleged role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol and the Florida classified documents case, as a “deranged person.”
According to Trump’s legal team, placing a gag order on a front-runner for president would violate his “First Amendment freedoms.”
It would somewhat resemble the accusations Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is currently facing for obtaining a firearm as a prohibited person if Trump were to be found to have engaged in illegal behaviour in his attempt to obtain a firearm.
