But there is nothing routine about this case. The defendant is Donald Trump and the charge is to lead a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The witness pool is huge and includes members of the former president’s inner circle, participants in his re-election campaign; some are on his payroll. In almost every one of his speeches, he repeats his lies about the election, which form the basis of the accusation against him.
“Standard language may not cut it in this case where thousands of Americans could be witnesses and he is in daily contact with people who might be involved,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles School of Law. . “Everything is more complicated in this case because the defendant is who he is, what he has done and that he wants to be president again.”
The problem was not long in coming. On Friday, the day after the most recent formal indictment, Trump proclaimed on his Truth Social social network, in all capital letters: “If you go after me, I’ll go after you.”
Federal prosecutors notified the judge. In a court filing, they asked for an order limiting the confidential information that Trump and his legal team could release publicly.
In a speech Friday at the Alabama Republican Party annual dinner, Trump portrayed himself as a victim of political persecution, saying, “You want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom.”
In the next few hours he will be the keynote speaker at the South Carolina Republican Party’s 56th Silver Elephant Gala.
The pool of potential witnesses in the case is very broad. Legislative hearings on the insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 could be a preview: Those interviews covered more than 1,000 people, including his children Ivanka and Donald, other family members and his closest advisers.
So you may already be talking about the case in front of witnesses.
When he traveled to Washington for the impeachment hearing Thursday, he was accompanied by his top aides, including Jason Miller, a communications clerk who was involved in the Jan. 6 legislative hearings, and Boris Epshteyn, an adviser involved in attempts to annul the election through false voters. These complications reflect a very real fact: the Trump campaign and his legal affairs are intertwined.
“The legal message is the political message and the political message is the legal message,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said before the latest hearing. “It is part of the fuel of our campaign. Trump has focused his campaign heavily on legal issues, and from our point of view, the message is effective.”
Trump talks about the 2020 election in almost every speech, telling supporters he ran twice and won twice and vows to win again. In his speeches, he spends long paragraphs on the trials he is facing and which he tries to present as a politicization of justice to harm his candidacy.
Many of his close advisers are potential witnesses. His 2024 campaign includes some, like Miller, who participated in the 2020 campaign, as well as some new leaders who were not implicated in his attempts to overturn the results.
The problem already appeared when the federal court accused Trump of illegally keeping confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago farm and rejecting government requests to hand them over.
In that case, there was an exchange between the judge and Trump’s lawyers about whether he could speak to the other defendant, his valet Walt Nauta. Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, noted that Nauta and potential witnesses are people Trump interacts with on a daily basis, whether at his Mar-a-Lago estate or at his other clubs.
The judge said that he could talk to Nauta, but not about the case. Nauta accompanied his patron to Washington and held her umbrella as the former president spoke to reporters before boarding the plane back to Bedminster, New Jersey.
The former president and current favorite to obtain the Republican nomination said on the track that the case was the “persecution” of a political opponent by President Joe Biden.
During the hearing in Washington, in which he pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and three other charges, he agreed not to discuss the case with witnesses without attorneys present and not to try to influence potential jurors or witnesses.
Federal magistrate Moxila Upadhyaya told him that any failure to do so could mean the issuance of a warrant for his arrest. The official witness list is usually produced closer to the trial date, although prosecutors often list potential witnesses earlier.
The former president is not noted for his restraint or for refraining from speaking on off-limits topics. He has previously been accused of failing to comply with court orders, and has been sternly told by the judge presiding over the bribery case to refrain from statements. that “may incite violence or civil unrest.”
Georgia prosecutors are investigating Trump and his allies for their attempts to reverse their election loss in that state.
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Jill Colvin contributed to this report from New York.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
