Federal prosecutors say that 25 witnesses in the election subversion case against Donald Trump withheld information and evidence from investigators by asserting attorney-client privilege and said they are concerned the former president may intimidate witnesses in next year’s trial.
The 25 witnesses, special counsel Jack Smith’s office said in a court filing Tuesday, include “co-conspirators, former campaign employees, the campaign itself, outside attorneys, a non-attorney intermediary, and even a family member of the defendant.”
Prosecutors did not name any of these witnesses in the filing. And it’s unclear from the filing if investigators were ultimately able to overcome those privilege claims to obtain the information.
The special counsel’s office wants Judge Tanya Chutkan to order Trump to formally say whether he wants to argue in trial that he was following the advice of his attorneys, noting that such a move would trigger additional discovery in the case and could open Trump’s communications with his lawyers to scrutiny.
Trump and his attorneys have made clear that they intend to bring this up as a defense in the case, prosecutors say, citing media interviews when Trump’s attorneys claimed the former president was being charged with following the advice of his attorneys in the wake of the 2020 election, including John Eastman.
Eastman and other attorneys who previously worked with Trump have been charged alongside the former president in the separate election subversion case in Georgia. The former president is the only one charged in the federal case, and Trump has pleaded not guilty.
The special counsel’s office also asked Chutkan to place special protections on information about prospective jurors when the case goes to trial next year, citing Trump’s social media posts about this prosecution and his other legal cases.
“Given the particular sensitivities of this case, stemming both from heightened public interest and the defendant’s record of using social media to attack others, the Court should impose certain limited restrictions on the ability of the parties to conduct research on potential jurors during jury selection and trial and to use juror research,” prosecutors wrote in a separate court filing Tuesday.
The most serious concern, prosecutors said, stems from the former president’s “continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation in court proceedings.” Just last week, the former president criticized a clerk during his New York civil trial in a social media post, prosecutors noted.
“Given that the defendant – after apparently reviewing opposition research on court staff – chose to use social media to publicly attack a court staffer, there is cause for concern about what he may do with social media research on potential jurors in this case,” prosecutors wrote.
Trump supporters also have issued threats against those involved in his legal troubles, prosecutors said, citing “directed threats to the Court” and to “grand jurors who returned an indictment in Fulton County, Georgia.”
Prosecutors also asked Chutkan to send a questionnaire to potential jurors in the weeks before the trial begins, allowing both sides to preemptively screen the individuals before they come in for jury selection.
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