Prosecutors seek to protect witnesses in Mar-A-Lago trial
Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to protect the identities of several witnesses involved in the criminal case accusing former President Donald Trump of illegally retaining classified documents, saying that if their names were revealed before trial, they could be exposed to “intolerable and needless risks.”
“There is a well-documented pattern in which judges, agents, prosecutors and witnesses involved in cases involving Trump have been subject to threats, harassment and intimidation,” the prosecutors wrote.
The request to protect the witnesses — made in court papers filed Thursday — came after Trump's legal team asked Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case, for permission to name some of the witnesses in court papers it recently filed related to arguments about discovery evidence.
Cannon ruled in favor of Trump and said the witnesses could be identified. The government responded Thursday night by accusing her of having committed a “clear error” and by asking her to rethink her decision and to keep the identities of more than two dozen witnesses from being revealed.
The filing reflected what seemed to be a mounting sense of frustration with Cannon on the part of prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith.
The papers were filed just days before the defense and the prosecution were scheduled to meet in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, to discuss, among other things, a highly unusual request by Trump's lawyers to gain access to a secret government filing concerning classified discovery evidence in the case.
Prosecutors have vehemently opposed the request, saying it lies entirely outside the normal rules governing the handling of classified material established in a federal law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act. Experts in the law say that if Cannon grants Trump's request to see the secret filing, it would be an unprecedented expansion of the statute.
The filing Thursday by Smith's team was only the latest effort by prosecutors to ensure the well-being of people involved in the two federal cases brought against Trump. Many participants in the other case — in which Trump stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election — have also been threatened or harassed by Trump or his supporters, including the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, and Smith himself.
In a different set of court papers filed Wednesday night, Smith's prosecutors said that a separate criminal investigation had been opened to examine threats made on social media against one of the potential witnesses in the documents case. Prosecutors did not identify the witness.
Among the people prosecutors are seeking to protect are “career civil servants and former close advisers” to Trump, the prosecutors wrote Thursday night. They told Cannon that one of the witnesses was so concerned about threats he might face from “Trump world” that he refused to permit the government to record an interview he conducted with investigators.