Hes the former Nixon White House counsel. John, you and i have spoken about this and donald trump so many times, but, you know, as i was discussing with one of our producers before this program got started, in the past, you know, we would talk about Donald Trumps tweets and his social media posts and wonder what the impact might be. But it sounds as though the Special Counsel in this case, jack smith, is really seizing on this very inflammatory, threateningsounding post from donald trump on truth social and alerting it to the judge. The government arguing that the restrictions that theyre seeking are necessary to prevent trump from publicly disclosing sensitive discovery information. Can you walk us through what this means . Yeah. It looks like the post from trump came out while they were working on a motion to agree upon a protective order in general to Exchange Discovery material. And this obviously caught their attention. This is not the sort of norm that theyre used to dealing with
Saying if trump were to begin posting details from grand jury transcripts it could have a Chilling Effect on witnesses. Remember this is just 24 hours after his arrest and arraignment in his third indictment over election interference and after the judge warned him against making threats. Lets go straight to john dean, hes the former Nixon White House counsel. And john, you and i have spoken about this and donald trump so many times, but, you know, as i was discussing with one of our producers before this program got started, in the past we would talk about Donald Trumps tweets and his social media posts and wonder what the impact might be, but it sounds as though the Special Counsel in this case, jack smith, is really seizing on this very inflammatory, threatening sounding post from donald trump on truoct to the judge. The government arguing that the restrictions that theyre seeking are necessary to prevent trump from publicly disclosing sensitive discovery information. Can you walk u
. thank you so much for joining us to night. and now we report on the eve of the arraignment of a former president. tomorrow marks the first court hearing in this case, new york versus donald trump, defendant this is the legal process which compelled trum topp to come to w york today from florida because he had to. the only alternative would have been resisting arrest and making the nypd come get him which they re capable of doing for any defendant. tomorrow trump goes downtown and like any citizen or any criminal defendant, he ll surrender, temporarily, to the custody of the lawful authorities there we know a bit about that process. the fingerprinting, booking, and like anyone, afforded rights and given an opportunity to enter a plea authorities ramped up security including thousands of members of nypd that are on a stand ready order. but lately donald trump has been trying to promote and fundraise off the charges and it s worth recalling tonight as we know more than we us
on truth social. if you come after us, we re coming after you, essentially what he s saying on truth social. the special counsel is holding this up as the reason as to why they need do be very careful about the discovery material going to be share. what s your response to all this? sadly, i m not surprised. donald trump is a 78-year-old man who has gotten away with everything in life, never having been told no. the one time he was told no it was by 81 million americans in 2020. and what did he attempt to do? end american democracy. i do believe unless a court is firm with donald trump, he will just continue to make these threats. i would urge the court respectfully to do whatever they can to ensure that donald trump does issue any further threats. otherwise he is just going to make an entire mockery of the criminal justice system even thore than he has. and are you worried if he s acquitted in this case, that
man who has gotten away with everything in life, never having been told no. the one time he was told no, it was by 81 million americans in 2020, and what did he attempt to do? end american democracy. i do believe unless a court is firm with donald trump, he will just continue to make these threats. i would urge the court respectfully to do whatever they can to ensure that donald trump doesn t issue any further threats. otherwise, he is just going to make an entire mockery of the criminal justice system even more than he has. and are you worried that if he s acquitted in this case, that he ll become politically stronger, that he could get a boost in the way he did in 2016? i remember that all too well. 11 days before the 2016 election, the comey letter comes out, and we could feel it out on the campaign trail. it shifted the momentum of the case. are you concerned that something like that could happen again and actually give trump a boost?