Attorneys for Donald Trump are insisting that comments made by the foreperson of a grand jury impanelled in Fulton County, Georgia to hear evidence of crimes committed by Donald Trump and his allies in the wake of the 2020 election have irreversably tainted the case against him.
It’s the latest effort by Mr Trump’s circle of allies to denigrate the integrity of those charged with investigating the multiple claims of wrongdoing that they face, and comes as cable news talking heads fretted over the weekend about whether Emily Kohrs had endangered the potential prosecution of Mr Trump or his advisers with remarks to several news outlets.
Ms Kohrs spoke to The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN and other outlets over the past week as her service to the grand jury concluded and its report was delivered to Fulton County prosecutors. According to Ms Kohrs, the list of recommended indictments is not short.
It was revelations like that — as well as veiled comments about witnesses the panel did not find especially credible — which landed Ms Kohrs squarely in the sights of Donald Trump and his attorneys following condemnations of her actions by some including CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
"We absolutely do not believe that our client did anything wrong, and if any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments," Mr Trump’s attorney Jennifer Little told CBS News on Sunday.
Another member of Mr Trump’s legal team, Drew Findling, insisted that his colleagues “feel this process has been compromised” by Ms Kohrs’s comments.
Their remarks essentially were refined versions of the Truth Social rantings that their client, the twice-impeached former president, has posted since Ms Kohrs’s media tour began.
“[A]n extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) “foreperson” of the Racist D.A.’s Special Grand Jury, [is] going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts. This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court,” Mr Trump wrote on 22 February.
But despite the consternations of Mr Trump’s team and others in the media, Ms Kohrs’s comments likely do not jeopardise any effort by prosecutors to go against Donald Trump or his allies, experts told The Independent.
“In light of the publicity Mr Trump, or any politician for that matter, attracts generally, this woman's statements are a drop in the bucket, actually the ocean,” Steve Plafker, a former deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, explained: “I do not see any chance of prejudice arising from them.”
He added that there was little chance of Mr Honig’s fears of Mr Trump’s attorneys filing successfully for potential charges to be dismissed.
“Even if I am wrong, there is no chance of their leading to a mistrial. Any danger of prejudice resulting from pre-trial publicity is handled at the time of jury selection. Mistrials result from problems arising during trial,” Mr Plafker said. “If this woman had been exercising good judgment, she would have gone home and kept her mouth shut, but I doubt that anything she said would make a prosecutor's job any more difficult than it already is.”
