Trump tells Georgia witness not to testify
Former President Trump on Monday appeared to warn former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan against testifying before the Fulton County grand jury in the state's 2020 election probe.
Driving the news: "I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury," Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on Monday.
- "He shouldn't. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia."
- Duncan, who criticized Trump's false election fraud claims in 2020, said Saturday that he had been told to appear Tuesday before the Fulton County grand jury.
- "Republicans should never let honesty be mistaken for weakness," he wrote in a post on X.
What's next: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears poised to issue a charging decision on Trump's alleged efforts to subvert election results.
The big picture: Trump's Monday Truth Social post comes days after the judge overseeing a separate trial — the federal probe into his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election — warned against making "inflammatory statements" that could intimidate witnesses in that trial.
- U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said during a Friday hearing that any appearance of witness tampering would increase the need for a speedy trial.
- Trump already faces three criminal trials: In D.C. over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, in Florida over his retention of classified documents and in New York over an alleged hush money payment.
Different case. (Can we pause for a moment to recognize how bonkers it is that a former president has so many criminal cases either in process or pending that it's getting hard to keep track?)
The judge who ordered him not to engage in any witness tampering is overseeing the federal case against him for trying to overturn the election in 2020. In this particular instance, he appears to have threatened a witness in the Fulton County, Georgia case, for which an indictment is expected soon.
Would it make a difference? Threatening a witness in one trial when you have several others ongoing and in such a public fashion would have a chilling effect on witness testimony for all trails, or so I would think.
It might. I'm no lawyer, but it's conceivable that the order will be interpreted as targeted specifically to witnesses in the federal trial.
That said, threatening people is illegal all on its own, so who knows...
@kescusay @there1snospoon
20 Year Maximum in Federal Prison for making a social media post. Only TFG would do something so stupid.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1729-protection-government-processes-tampering-victims-witnesses-or#:\~:text=Section%201512%20of%20Title%2018,a%20witness%2C%20victim%20or%20informant.
I was testing mastodon with this post. Success.
Not necessarily. If it's just a political threat, that's fine. And like a lot of what Trump says, this is just borderline enough to not explicitly threaten physical violence to the point of criminality. It really needs the witness tampering to become criminal. If he says that he will cause political consequences if Jeff Duncan testifies, that would let the prosecution slap witness tampering on to the rest of the case. Hell, he could be convicted on that alone.
That charge is already on the docket.
Right, my point was that his threats were not criminal due to being political threats alone, but due to being associated with testifying.