‘Very real dangers of harassment, intimidation, and reprisal’: Jack Smith pushes Mar-a-Lago judge to bar Trump from releasing names of potential witnesses – By Jerry Lambe (Law & Crime) / Feb 17, 2024
The prosecutor appointed to oversee the federal government’s prosecution of Donald Trump over the former president’s allegedly wrongful retention of documents inside his resort home in Florida is once again imploring the presiding judge to stop Trump’s legal team from releasing unredacted discovery material which appears to be aimed at exposing the identities of potential government witnesses.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Judge Aileen Cannon — whom Trump appointed to the bench — earlier this month rejected a request from special counsel Jack Smith to keep the government’s redactions in place on certain filings. Cannon reasoned that Smith failed to set forth a sufficient “factual or legal basis” that would warrant deviating from “the strongest presumption in favor of public access” to such documents.
The majority of Smith’s proposed redactions concerned “sealing the identity of potential Government witnesses and their statements,” and in support of that, Smith “refers in general terms to witness safety and intimidation,” Cannon wrote in the Feb. 6 order denying the special prosecutor’s request.
