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…
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