Prosecutors fear former President Donald Trump will use his criminal trial to attack and threaten witnesses — and they are moving to try to prevent that from happening, reported the Associated Press on Friday.
Trump faces dozens of felony counts of business record fraud related to his alleged $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which helped conceal a sex scandal from the public during the 2016 presidential cycle. Trump has denied anything illegal took place and claims the whole story was a shakedown.
"The Manhattan district attorney’s office filed court papers Monday asking Judge Juan Manuel Merchan for a protective order that would put strict guardrails around Trump’s access to and use of evidence turned over by prosecutors prior to trial. That kind of evidence sharing, called discovery, is routine in criminal cases, and is intended to help ensure a fair trial," reported Michael R. Sisak. "Prosecutors want to block Trump from posting evidence to social media or providing it to third parties. They also want to restrict how he views certain sensitive material, asking that he do so only in the presence of his lawyers — and that he not be able to copy, photograph or transcribe those records."
"Trump 'has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him,' Assistant District Attorney Catherine McCaw wrote," said the report. "That behavior, she said, has put 'those individuals and their families at considerable safety risk.'"
Trump has been publicly attacking legal officials involved in litigation against him for years. In 2015, he infamously attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit, claiming that he couldn't judge him fairly because Curiel is of Mexican descent and "I'm building a wall." He has already gone on the offensive in this case, making several racist attacks against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and posting a social media image of himself facing down Bragg with a baseball bat.
"With Trump sitting at the defense table just feet away from her, McCaw told Merchan that a protective order was needed to 'ensure the sanctity of the proceedings as well as the sanctity of the discovery materials,'" said the report. "At the time, McCaw said prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers were close to a joint agreement with many of the restrictions prosecutors are now asking Merchan to impose. Negotiations later broke down, leading prosecutors to seek the judge’s intervention."
