Re: "Special" counsel details threats against witnesses in Mar-a-Lago case in effort to protect their identities

[Special Counsel Crapping Pants Now]

In article <60662c04-43ac-4411...@googlegroups.com>
Molly Bolt <mollyth...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Fucking crybaby sees his Trump case slipping away because of the
Biden pass.
>
> Smith is full of shit. Stick him with a pin and he'll pop. Uh,
bring an umbrella.

In a fight over keeping the identity of witnesses protected in the
criminal document mishandling case against Donald Trump, special
counsel Jack Smith this week detailed myriad threats against
prosecutors, judges and other witnesses.

One threat against a witness has prompted a federal investigation,
the special counsel’s office wrote in court filings.

“Witnesses, agents, and judicial officers in this very case have
been harassed and intimidated,” they wrote, “and the further outing
of additional witnesses will pose a similarly intolerable risk of
turning their lives upside down.”

The focus on fears of witness intimidation and harassment highlight
an ongoing struggle in cases against Trump, which have prompted
discussion in court about curtailing the former president’s ability
to discuss the cases in public to protect the proceedings.

The classified documents case, especially, has been surrounded by
secrecy.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the federal criminal case in
Florida, is considering the Justice Department’s concerns about
witnesses as well as requests for transparency in the case.

So far, in the Florida documents case alone, Cannon, FBI agents, the
judge who approved the search warrant of Mar-a-Lago, the special
counsel, Justice Department prosecutors and witnesses in the case
have all been threatened or intimidated on some level, prosecutors
wrote. Possible witnesses against Trump are “routinely” being
threatened in a way that could intimidate them from participating in
the case, they added.

Earlier this week, the prosecutors revealed that “a prospective
government witness” was threatened over social media, a situation
that is now being investigated by a US attorney’s office. The
prosecutors don’t want to disclose more about that investigation in
court out of fear investigators’ work could be dirupted, they wrote.

Many possible witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago investigation are already
known publicly given how many political aides and Trump company
employees testified in the grand jury proceeding that led to Trump’s
indictment. At least some of those are expected to be called again
to testify against the former president.

“These risks are far from speculative in this case,” one filing
said, adding that “a court’s duty is to prevent harms to the
witnesses or the judicial process.”

“Those significant interests in maintaining confidentiality greatly
outweigh the disclosure interests of the defendants and the public.”

Some of the witnesses are unnamed “career civil servants and former
close advisers to defendant Trump.”

Prosecutors want to keep names secret of government personnel from
the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) who
discussed the documents Trump kept from them after his presidency,
of a Department of Energy lawyer who wrote a memo about Trump’s
security clearance terminating when he left the presidency, and of
more than 20 FBI agents who were present at the August 2022 search
of Mar-a-Lago.

“The Court should not tolerate this barely veiled attempt to slide
into the public record, by first and last name, the participation”
of the FBI personnel, the prosecutors said.

“(T)he defendants have publicly alleged, with no basis, that NARA
was part of a government-wide scheme targeting Trump. There is no
reason to publish the names of – and thereby unnecessarily expose to
intimidation and harassment – numerous NARA officials who have only
done their jobs.”

Other witnesses whose names prosecutors want to keep under wraps
include individuals who had relationships with Trump or his co-
defendants, aides Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, and a person
who “provided sensitive information to the FBI about activity at
Mar-a-Lago” leading up to investigators seizing hundreds of records
in a search of the property in August 2022.

One witness, prosecutors say, declined to have his interview with
investigators recorded, “citing the associated risks to him in
‘Trump world’ of doing so,” the filing said.

Another witness shared confidential information about the layout of
the private residence at Mar-a-Lago, including where Trump’s son’s
bedroom was located.

Trump’s lawyers have sought to make public the witness names and
related information in the case, since they have included them in
court filings. But the names are locked down under a previously
imposed court order, and the Trump side needs the judge’s permission
to disclose them.

Trump’s side said in a court filing that there’s “no compelling
interest” in keeping the information sealed and no legal reason to
redact the names.

Smith’s team has also accused Trump, in attempting to compel more
discovery and asking for more time to file certain pretrial motions,
of continually trying to delay the trial, which is currently set for
May.

“Their objective is plain—to delay trial as long as possible,”
prosecutors wrote in a filing Thursday in the case. “And the tactics
they deploy are relentless and misleading—they will stop at nothing
to stall the adjudication of the charges against them by a fair and
impartial jury of citizens.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/09/politics/mar-a-lago-trump-witness-
threats/index.html