INTIMIDATION: Trump TARGETS potential witness against him on social media
Social media posts about witnesses are a gray area that the gag orders that Donald Trump is subject to have not yet rigorously tested.
Is it witness intimidation when someone who may have control of the U.S. Justice Department by this time next year calls for the prosecution of a key witness in one of the many criminal proceedings against him?
Trump has previously attacked Cassidy Hutchinson for her testimony about his (alleged) temper tantrum when his driver refused to take him to the Capitol on January 6th — but now he’s going even further.
Trump and his Congressional allies have been fighting to discredit Hutchinson, even releasing a new report that claims to discredit her by citing other White House personnel who say they didn’t hear the story about Trump lunging as though he wanted to grab the steering wheel of his armored transport that she said she’d heard that day.
They did not refute that multiple other witnesses also testified that Trump was enraged at being denied his desire to join his fans at the Capitol, though.
Now Trump is calling for Hutchinson to be prosecuted for telling her story, though to do so would require not only proving that what she said wasn’t true, but that it was an intentional and willful lie.
There’s no evidence for that — but Hutchinson has admitted withholding information in earlier interviews, saying she did so at the behest of her Trump-aligned lawyer, who she later fired and replaced.
Whether or not such an attempted prosecution could be successful, Trump is holding it over the head of a major witness against him. He wrote:
“Our great Secret Service has totally CRUSHED Cassidy Hutchinson’s (who I barely knew) made up (FAKE!) stories about me roughing up Secret Service Agents from the back seat of the Beast (Limo). Has she now changed her testimony? Will she be prosecuted for what she did and said?”
Trump himself has corroborated part of Hutchinson’s testimony, admitting that he wanted to go to the Capitol and that the Secret Service wouldn’t allow it. He has even admitted that he was still pushing to go after the protests turned into violent riots.
Trump was already accused of attempting to tamper with January 6th witnesses for allegedly trying to make contact with Hutchinson during public hearings, according to CNBC.
He was also fined for attacking a court employee during his New York fraud trial, and one of his co-defendants in his Georgia RICO prosecution earned additional hearings and a modification of the terms of release for making contact with a witness in that case.
See Trump’s post below.
