As he prepares to begin choosing a jury in the federal election interference case against disgraced former president Donald Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith is making it clear that he isn’t just taking “taking the gloves off,” he’s also taking every precaution, according to legal expert and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.
In Smith’s latest court filing, Kirschner says, the special counsel didn’t just take off the gloves, “He boxed them up, taped up the box, and sent them to long-term storage.”
Referencing Smith’s “Motion for Fair and Protective Jury Procedures,” Kirschner notes the special counsel has requested that Judge Tanya Chutkan use a written questionnaire to select the jury so that Trump and his attorneys can’t taint the jury pool.
“You can’t friend the juror — trying to draw more information out of the jury. You can’t communicate or attempt to communicate not from yourself or an intermediary.”
Pointing at the camera, Kirschner then imagines what Judge Chutkan will tell Trump:
“So look Donald, you can’t have any of your dirty associates, you know Rudy Giuliani or Roger Stone or Steve Bannon put a friend request in for the potential jurors. That would violate the resolution, and the limitations of prosecution is seeking to have the court impose.”
Smith’s filing also cites Trump’s social media posts aimed at the clerk of a New York judge overseeing his civil fraud trial.
“There are other good reasons in this case for the Court to impose these restrictions and enforce this District’s standard prohibition against publicizing jurors’ identities,” according to Smith’s motion. “Chief among them is the defendant’s continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation in court proceedings.”
That led Kirschner to remark, “It also looks like the prosecutors are priming the well. Because they put a lot of information in there — appropriately so — about Donald Trump’s most recent reckless speech and posts endangering a judge’s law clerk.”
Kirschner said he also expects Judge Chutkan to impose a gag order on Trump:
“But I would bet the full buck on Judge Chutkan imposing some narrowly tailored restrictions on Donald Trump’s speech, posts, and on his dangerous rhetoric. Sometimes deadly rhetoric after that hearing is conducted on Monday Oct. 16.”
“If Donald Trump has shown anything to be true: it is he is willing to endanger witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, judges they’re respective family members. And he’s willing to urge his supporters to do all sorts of let’s call them inappropriate things to help him avoid and evade his responsibility for his crimes.”
