Fulton county prosecutors have asked the judge overseeing the 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia to immediately impose an “emergency” protective order over the discovery materials to prevent potential future leaks of evidence.
The request came after several media outlets published details of videotaped statements that former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro gave as part of plea deals to avoid being tried as racketeering co-defendants with the former president.
The Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis had previously asked for a protective order for the discovery materials in the case. But citing the leak of several of the “proffer” interviews, Willis renewed the request on Tuesday to Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee.
“The release of these confidential video recordings is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses,” the filing said, “subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial, constitutes indirect communication about the facts of this case with co-defendants and witnesses”.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he and 18 co-defendants engaged in racketeering activity and conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia. To date, three of Trump’s ex-lawyers and a local Republican operative have taken plea deals.
The actual motivation for the leaks were unclear. Ellis’s testimony, for instance, was widely seen as damaging to Trump – and the move to seek a protective order amounted to an aggressive play by prosecutors to suppress discussion of the proffers leading up to trial.
Willis also said in the filing that she would take the unusual step of refusing to send copies of the video recordings to defense lawyers, and that they would instead have to watch the recordings at her office in downtown Atlanta, where they could only take notes.
In the separate federal 2020 election subversion case brought against Trump in Washington, the discovery materials were subject to a protective order almost as soon as Trump was charged. But special counsel prosecutors have not forced Trump’s lawyers to only view the discovery in person.
The prosecutors disclosed in their submission to the judge some back-and-forth communications they had with a couple defense lawyers over the leaks, including with Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow, who had asked the district attorney’s office to state they had not leaked the material.
“The state had nothing to do with leaking any information to the media!” replied Nathan Wade, one of the top prosecutors on the case.
But then a lawyer for Harrison Floyd, a Trump ally charged with harassing Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, replied to the email chain on Tuesday morning, writing, “It was Harrison Floyd’s team.” The lawyer later said the statement was a typo and that they were not the leak.
Willis first requested a protective order on 27 September. The delay with the protective order, according to a person familiar with the matter, has been over a protracted negotiation between the district attorney’s office and all 19 co-defendants over the language in the order.
