Judge Skeptical About Request to Limit Trump Statements on F.B.I.

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case posed tough questions on Monday to prosecutors who have asked her to bar him from making inflammatory statements that might endanger any F.B.I. agents involved in the case.

At a contentious hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, seemed disinclined to impose new conditions on Mr. Trump that would limit what he could say about the F.B.I.

Prosecutors had asked for the restrictions last month after Mr. Trump made blatantly false statements, claiming that federal agents were “locked & loaded ready to take me out” when they carried out a search two years ago at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. The court-authorized search was a crucial element of the government’s investigation, leading to the discovery of more than 100 classified documents that Mr. Trump kept after leaving office.

The hearing was the latest clash between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith. It centered on a knotty issue that has now cropped up in several of the former president’s legal cases: how to balance Mr. Trump’s right to attack the government — even falsely — against shielding the participants in the cases from threats of violence or harassment inspired by his incendiary remarks.

Judge Cannon put off answering that question for the moment, declining to join the other judges who have put restrictions on Mr. Trump’s speech in two of his criminal cases — in Washington and New York — and during his civil fraud trial in Manhattan.

But she expressed skepticism about the mechanism prosecutors want to use to curb Mr. Trump’s remarks in Florida.