Now that a Georgia judge has been assigned to oversee Donald Trump's case after he was indicted along with 18 co-conspirators for his attempts to tamper with the 2020 presidential election results, legal observers are anxious to see if any threats he subsequently makes will be handled.
With legal analyst Andrew Weissmann predicting the former president and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee – appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp (R) – will "clash," former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance indicated she will be intrigued to see if McAffee will come down harder on Trump than his D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan.
Writing on Substack, Vance noted Weissmann's concerns and asked, "Could Trump be held in jail pending trial?"
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As she pointed out, the former president's penchant for inflammatory rhetoric in his social media posts and at rallies, which could be construed as witness tampering, will likely be a topic that will arise.
"Trump’s lawyers will surely claim his posts are just jokes, or locker room talk, or whatever their excuse du jour is. But the question will be how the judge views them," she suggested. "Are they actual intimidation or just a guy with a big megaphone strapped to his mouth blowing off steam?"
Pointing out that Trump has rarely, if ever, been held accountable for this "sort of conduct, as well as for the threats he makes against people," she said, "If he had told the witness face to face that he shouldn’t testify as opposed to 'truthing' it, there would have been little question prosecutors would take action if they learned of it."
She then predicted, "We’ll likely learn at arraignment how Judge McAfee intends to handle this behavior."
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