Former President Donald Trump is now facing allegations of witness tampering, Open Secrets reports.
According to the outlet, Trump is facing these allegations in several of the legal cases that have been brought against, including in the cases that have been brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D).
Both Smith and Willis have brought criminal indictments against Trump. Willis accuses Trump and his associations of engaging in criminal conduct when they challenged Georgia's results in the 2020 presidential election.
Smith, on the other hand, has brought two cases against Trump on behalf of the federal government. One of the cases regards the Capitol protest of Jan. 6, 2021, and the other regards Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents when he left the White House.
Open Secret's report is not entirely clear regarding the witness tampering claims. But, it appears that the allegation stems from the fact that Trump has directed money to various entities, who have paid funds to various lawfirms, who have represented some of the witnesses who are involved in Trump's prosecution.
Open Secrets reports, "In total, Trump’s political network reported steering about $130 million in donor funds to pay lawyers and cover legal costs since he first began running for office. The network paid over $50 million of that since the start of 2022."
The allegation seems to be that paying these lawyers and covering these legal costs - which, again, are for some of the witnesses in the cases that Trump is facing - amounts to witness tampering.
Open Secrets reports:
Federal court records from the fight over Special Council Jack Smith’s search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account that were unsealed on Sept. 15. highlight Trump’s propensity toward retaliation and called Trump’s paying legal fees for “potential witnesses against him” as an “obstructive effort.”
Whether this claim actually holds any water is unclear.
What this appears to be is the latest questionable tactic from the prosecution.
If the reader has been paying close attention to the cases that have been brought against Trump, then the reader will likely recognize that the prosecution, oftentimes, seems to be resorting to questionable tactics.
Perhaps those most damning example of all is the prosecution's decision to name various unindicted co-conspirators in some of the cases. What this does is essentially poison the well. How is a jury going to react to potentially exonerating testimony for Trump from an unindicted "co-conspiriator"?
It is also worth pointing out that the proseuction, in these cases, is often vigorously pursuing secondary charges. Trump, on multiple occassions, has alleged that what the proseuction is doing is essentially making up a crime and then claiming that Trump obstructed the proseuction's investigation of that fake crime. The tampering with witnesses claim would also fit into this category.
If the proseuctors' cases against Trump were so strong, why would they have to resort to such tactics?
