In a new filing made with federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team raise concerns about the continuing rhetoric on social media from former President Donald Trump that arguably relates to the criminal case brought by Smith against Trump and now overseen by Chutkan. The case relates to Trump’s attempts after the last presidential election to secure another term despite his documented loss to Joe Biden.
In short, Smith’s team was raising concerns about a proposed schedule from the defense for dealing with references to sensitive materials in court filings, and prosecutors argued that the weeks-long schedule of review suggested for such filings was simply untenable considering the urgency and rapid developments behind certain matters in the case — like Trump’s posts. “Such a requirement would grind litigation in this case to a halt, which is particularly infeasible given the pressing matters before the Court—including the defendant’s daily extrajudicial statements that threaten to prejudice the jury pool in this case, as described in the Government’s motion,” the special counsel’s team asserted. Prosecutor Molly Gaston signed this filing made with the judge.
The dispute before Chutkan is in the context of filings making reference to sensitive materials that Smith’s team sought to submit. Before actually making the filings, prosecutors had sought — as expected — court approval for what Smith’s team imagined would have been an unredacted version to be kept private and an accompanying version with redactions made available for public access.
Though there isn’t a lot of context in the filing from Smith’s team that raises those concerns about the statements from Trump on social media, Trump’s team has long established their interest in seeking to exert seemingly as much control as possible over the dissemination of potentially protected information and materials. In one example, Trump’s team temporarily secured the selection of a special master for handling privilege disputes around documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in the classified documents investigation, though that process was judicially shut down before it naturally reached its end. Trump, meanwhile, just keeps posting. Associated concerns have included intimidation towards witnesses and impacts on the pool of potential jurors.
