Prosecutors made the unusual decision this week to remain almost entirely mum about the order in which they planned to call their first witnesses in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York.
Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor working on behalf of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said Friday evening he would let Trump’s attorneys know the name of their first witness on Sunday night, the day before opening arguments in the case are set to begin, according to a report from the courtroom. Trump’s defense team had asked for the names of the first three witnesses that prosecutors would call.
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“Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses," Steinglass told Judge Juan Merchan. "We’re not telling them who the witnesses are.”
Blanche then asked Merchan if he could have the information if he promised Trump would not post on social media about the witnesses, to which Merchan replied that he did not believe Blanche could make such a vow.
Disagree here. Trump doesn’t need to publicly post about it, literally any method of communicating the names to his followers (including intermediaries) would work. It would be hard to concretely prove that telling Trump directly lead to the names being exposed, but Trump’s followers would still get to start their witness tampering / intimidation nonetheless. So basically telling Trump is a lose-lose scenario.
Also, there is really no possible way for Trump to safely be locked in any prison. He’s too high profile of an individual to be locked with normal inmates. That presents a huge security risk, since foreign nations could easily interact with / access him through current and future inmates.