Donald Trump faces a delicate balancing act between as a presidential candidate who wants to speak his mind and a criminal defendant who has to watch what he says, a former prosecutor said on Thursday.
Former Chief Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo during an appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” said the difficult parameters within which Trump will have to operate in the coming months figures to present challenges for the former president.
“He's still campaigning to be president, giving speeches and holding rallies,” Cooper said. “Is it only a matter of time before he says something publicly that's incriminating or anything he says on the campaign trail about this which possibly could be used against him?”
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“Absolutely, and he has to be careful about that. He has to be careful of a couple of things,” Agnifilo said.
“He has to be careful about statements that he's going to say that will either lock him into a particular story, or things that can be used against him that are potentially incriminating. He also has to be careful because he's going to for example, Mike Pence is running against him and he's going to want to say things about Mike Pence, but he has to walk a fine line and not intimidate a witness against him since Mike Pence is one of the main witnesses against him in Jack Smith's January 6 case.
“So that's going to be a dance that would be hard for anyone to do and he is not careful. So it'll be interesting to see how the judges, how the courts, will deal with that sort of that sort of intimidation of a witness.”
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