In a new filing in federal court (from Tuesday), the federal prosecutors who brought the election interference charges against former President Donald Trump at that level pushed for the enshrining of various protections for potential and actual jurors in the case. The federal team, helmed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, pointed specifically to Trump’s recent online attacks on a judicial clerk in a separate case to help make their case for shielding the jurors here.
In that separate situation, Trump claimed online amid trial on civil fraud claims from New York state Attorney General Letitia James that a clerk for presiding Judge Arthur Engoron was the “girlfriend” of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a factually untrue assertion. Trump even directed his followers to an evident Instagram account for the individual, leading Engoron to issue a gag order blocking parties in the ongoing case from similar future commentary about the court’s staff.
Smith’s team characterized the protections for which they argued as generally in line with standard practice, though their motion, which included other requests, was opposed by the defense, they said. “The Court also should prohibit the use of information gained from juror research for any purpose other than voir dire, and even there, the Court should require that if a party intends to use any information gained through open-source research, the party does so in a way that does not reveal any juror’s identity,” the federal filing argued. “Voir dire” is the process of jury selection.
Arguing also for the understanding that public disclosure of details is blocked to accompany any jury selection documents, presumably including any instance in which Trump accesses the materials, the prosecutors pointed directly to his past actions as support.
“There are other good reasons in this case for the Court to impose these restrictions and enforce this District’s standard prohibition against publicizing jurors’ identities. Chief among them is the defendant’s continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation in court proceedings. In addition to the record before the Court from the Government’s previous filings, see ECF Nos. 57 & 64, just last week the defendant escalated his conduct and publicly attacked the trial judge’s law clerk in his pending civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court,” the authorities told this judge. “Given that the defendant—after apparently reviewing opposition research on court staff—chose to use social media to publicly attack a court staffer, there is cause for concern about what he may do with social media research on potential jurors in this case.”
