Fulton County prosecutors filed an emergency request for a protective order in the Georgia election subversion case on Tuesday after recorded statements made by multiple defendants as part of their plea deals were made public.
On Monday, ABC News and The Washington Post published footage of the proffer sessions, which showed the four defendants who pleaded guilty being questioned by prosecutors about their involvement in various efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Prosecutors said the footage was turned over to the remaining defendants as part of discovery, urging the court to impose restrictions on how the defendants can disclose the materials.
“The release of these confidential video recordings is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial, constitutes indirect communication about the facts of this case with codefendants and witnesses, and obstructs the administration of justice, in violation of the conditions of release imposed on each defendant,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
To prevent further disclosure, prosecutors said they will not provide videos of any proffer sessions to defendants moving forward.
“Instead, defendants must come to the District Attorney’s Office to view confidential video recordings of proffers. They may take notes, but they will be prohibited from creating any recordings or reproductions,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Why do I see Trump’s team attempting to turn this into an issue that can be used as the basis for an appeal?
“Your Honor, the crazy radical leftist prosecutors would not allow us to review evidence that is crucial to our case unless we visited their office. They made the evidence available only at inconvenient times and obviously bugged the room so they could listen in on our defense strategy. Since they only made the evidence available six months before the trial, which is clearly not enough time to watch half a dozen videos, I demand that the verdict be overturned, and the entire case thrown out. I also demand that Fani Willis be deported and Jack Smith excommunicated by the pope.”
–Trump’s legal team, probably
They’re probably going to try that, but those proceedings are televised, that judge is no joke.
It will be appealed, that’s guaranteed. Whether there’s anything to appeal, sure. Every DA’s office screws up. Let’s hope they’re on this one.
This isn’t just the case of a career, it’s going to be hard to upset as the most consequential case any Fulton County DA has ever tried. They also spent the time to make sure they got the charges meticulously right, and gathered all the evidence possible. People make mistakes, but it really seems like they’ve done everything possible to keep the error rate low