Accountable. In their motion for a protective order, the Justice Department says, quote, such a protective order is needed in this case the because the defendant has released statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys and other associates in legal matters pending against him. In recent days the defendant has issued multiple posts, either specifically or by implication including the following which the defendant posted just hours ago. If you go after me, im coming after you. The filing including a screen shot of that ominous threat. Prosecutors went on to say, quote, if the defendant were to begin issuing public posts using details or, for example, grand jury transcripts obtained in discovery, it could have a harmful, Chilling Effect on witnesses or adversely affect the Fair Administration of justice in this case. That request by the Special Counsel triggered a battle between team trump and the doj. Here is how the New York Times wrote this. John lauro, one of tru
which was really trying to argue that there was somehow a deep state while they were using the very powers of the committee and the powers of congress to shut down any discussion about what social media companies should be doing to protect us from hate and harassment online, which is one of the areas that is permitted under our constitution in order to balance, balance our right to free speech with our right to safety. you know, there is a gray area. there is a need to have a debate. but frankly, this isn t going back to mary s point, these are not things that are unknown or unusual in our judicial system. but we re hearing a very dangerous narrative that goes to the heart of trying to undermine confidence in our judicial system. but it s using it in a way that s also trying to tell us not to believe our lying eyes or ears about when we see
into court with their motion. when the defense attorneys on saturday asked for an extension to oppose the protective order, they claimed that the government hadn t been willing sneeshlg to engage with them and confer and the government responded saying yes, we have. so we are going back and forth with who is playing nicely in the sandbox and who isn t. and i think that s part of what they re trying to suggest, that they have actually were the ones being magnanimous here and that the government was not responding in real time. and i expect the government will respond to that if not in writing orally when they re before the court. the other thing they re trying to do is really, really pick apart this proposed protective order with red lines and get the court to, again, delay things i think by getting the court to hold a hearing on this and go paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and entertain argument about each provision of what really should be a pretty
sure that they can share information even with people they are not paying as part of the defense. that s a big red flag to me because think about it this way. rudy giuliani is an attorney. well, if trump isn t paying him for legal counsel but they say we re going to treat him as part of our defense even though he s an unindicted co-conspirator, you can see many problems with why that might be concerning. so you have to ask yourself, who is it that they want to share material with who they are not paying as part of the defense? and we are just getting here as i mentioned the printout of the indictment, 29 pages. going through it in real time to get a sense of what the response is from team trump. but mary, i don t know if you ve had a chance to look at it but one of the main things you see there on page 1, or certainly on point a, if you will, in the argument from trump s team is they say that the proposed protective order is overbroad,
that the claims of election fraud were, quote, unquote crazy or that he conceded that he had lost, telling mike pence at the time that pence was simply, quote, too honest. that s why you see smigs making this argument. it s why you saw the argument being made in previous opinions that were released even before the justice department was looking into this, that at this point now, very well-known opinion by judge carter in california that said that trump and john eastman were most likely guilty of trying to defraud the american people because they both conceded at various times in correspondence and communications from other people that they realized to some extent the legal argument they were making was not as on firm grounding as they would now like to be arguing. andrew, just to button up this part of the conversation, even bill barr isn t buying the