The son of a politician backed by Trump was busted on January 6 following a report from her mother on Facebook: Feds 

US: Remembering the altercation that occurred between Judge Aileen Cannon and Jack Smith regarding the witness names in the Mar-a-Lago case? Attorneys for Donald Trump do, and they are now requesting that the court overseeing the Jan. 6 hearing require the special counsel to provide an explanation for his purported “about-face” in an apparent defensive effort to keep “sensitive witness statements” from becoming public prior to the election. 

The special counsel’s move for leave to file stated, “In the proposed redacted Motion, the Government has redacted the names of individuals (aside from those whose names appear publicly in the superseding indictment, such as the defendant and Vice President Michael R. Pence).”

Naming all witnesses

The Government has redacted citations in the footnotes that identify the non-public sources of the information, such as grand jury transcripts, interview reports, or material acquired through sealed search warrants, but has not redacted quotations or summaries of information from Sensitive Materials in the body of the motion.

Remember that before Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump’s defense had sought for “naming all witnesses.” After one of the Mar-a-Lago witnesses came forward, Cannon first became receptive to the idea of naming them. However, the judge then changed her mind in response to the danger of an appeal.

In that regard, Trump’s legal team argued that the special counsel’s assertion that they were indifferent to witness safety was “absurd” and “baseless.” They are now trying to turn the tables by asserting that Smith is the one endangering the witnesses by trying to make their remarks widely known in a “politically motivated manifesto[.]” before the election.

“They have cited previously to this Court and in the Southern District of Florida,” the defense argued, and they asked Chutkan to order the special counsel to “show cause why their proposed public disclosure of voluminous purportedly sensitive witness statements is consistent with the risks of witness safety, potential juror taint, and the integrity of the proceedings.”

“It is irresponsible for the prosecutors to so quickly abandon the safety and privacy interests that they previously assigned great weight in this case and in the Southern District of Florida, even though the Presidential immunity filing contains few, if any, new allegations not already covered in other politically motivated and inaccurate lawfare efforts that President Trump’s opponents have improperly funded and disseminated,” the defense said on Tuesday.

Privacy and safety issues

“Therefore, the Court ought to order the Office to consistently withhold identity-related information and to demonstrate why their planned public release of numerous allegedly sensitive witness statements won’t jeopardize potential witnesses or unjustly affect the outcome of this case.”

Additionally, Smith’s suggested “redactions and pseudonyms” don’t “meaningfully mitigate the privacy and safety issues” at hand, according to the defense. In order to preserve their clients’ privacy, Trump’s lawyers John Lauro, Todd Blanche, Gregory Singer, and Emil Bove immediately addressed the Mar-a-Lago conflict when the special counsel demanded that “even ‘Ancillary Names'” be made anonymous.

Smith is now taking a “different view,” according to the defense, because the filing of the huge immunity brief was a “politically motivated mission” that may potentially affect the 2024 election and “unfairly prejudice the adjudication of this case.”

“Therefore, the Office should be required to redact all references to the titles and positions held by the witnesses who are not specifically named in the Superseding Indictment,” the defense said, in the event that the Court is inclined to grant the identity-related element of the Motion. “The Office should bear the responsibility of implementing these redactions in the first place, as this matter recurs multiple times in the Office’s extensive brief.”