NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors have requested a decide to bar Donald Trump from utilizing proof from his legal case to assault witnesses, citing what they are saying is the previous president’s historical past of creating “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about folks he is tangled with in authorized disputes.
The Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace filed court docket papers Monday asking Choose Juan Manuel Merchan for a protecting order that might put strict guardrails round Trump’s entry to and use of proof turned over by prosecutors previous to trial. That type of proof sharing, known as discovery, is routine in legal circumstances, and is meant to assist guarantee a good trial.
Prosecutors need to block Trump from posting proof to social media or offering it to 3rd events. Additionally they need to limit how he views sure delicate materials, asking that he accomplish that solely within the presence of his attorneys — and that he not be capable of copy, {photograph} or transcribe these data.
Trump “has a longstanding and maybe singular historical past of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others concerned in authorized proceedings towards him,” Assistant District Lawyer Catherine McCaw wrote.
That conduct, she mentioned, has put “these people and their households at appreciable security threat.”
Merchan didn’t instantly rule on the prosecution’s request. McCaw, in her submitting, requested him to schedule a listening to on the matter subsequent week.
E-mail messages in search of remark had been left with Trump’s attorneys.
Prosecutors first raised considerations about Trump probably weaponizing the invention course of at his April 4 arraignment on costs that he falsified data at his firm as a part of a broader 2016 scheme to make secret hush-money funds to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. Trump has denied wrongdoing — or having extramarital affairs — and pleaded not responsible.
With Trump sitting on the protection desk simply ft away from her, McCaw instructed Merchan {that a} protecting order was wanted to “make sure the sanctity of the proceedings in addition to the sanctity of the invention supplies.”
On the time, McCaw mentioned prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys had been near a joint settlement with most of the restrictions prosecutors at the moment are asking Merchan to impose. Negotiations later broke down, main prosecutors to hunt the decide’s intervention.