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      Mark Meadows’s Lawyer Pressed on Bid to Move Georgia Election Case to Federal Court

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      A panel of appeals court judges appeared skeptical of the arguments on Friday on behalf of Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff.A lawyer for Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff under former President Donald J. Trump, faced tough questions from a panel of judges on Friday as Mr. Meadows renewed his bid to move a Georgia election interference case from state court to federal court.The panel of three appeals court judges heard brief oral arguments from a Georgia prosecutor and a lawyer for Mr. Meadows over the jurisdiction of the case, in which Mr. Meadows is accused of working with a group of people to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.The judges asked sharp questions of both sides but seemed particularly skeptical of the arguments advanced by Mr. Meadows, who claims that the allegations against him concern actions he took as a federal officer and thus should be dealt with in federal court.Moving the case to federal court would give Mr. Meadows advantages, including a jury pool drawn from a wider geographic area with moderately more support for Mr. Trump. But in September, a federal judge sided with the prosecutors, writing that Mr. Meadows’s conduct, as outlined in the indictment, was “not related to his role as White House chief of staff or his executive branch authority.”Mr. Meadows appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, where the three-judge panel — consisting of two Democrat-appointed judges and one Republican-appointed judge — peppered lawyers with questions on Friday in an ornate courtroom in downtown Atlanta.In her questioning of Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, Judge Nancy Abudu, an appointee of President Biden, said that Mr. Meadows’s own testimony, in August, had seemed to broadly define what actions were part of his official duties as chief of staff.“The testimony that was provided essentially didn’t provide any outer limits to what his duties were,” Judge Abudu said. “So it’s almost as if he could do anything, in that capacity, as long as he could say it was on behalf of the president.”But Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, countered that Mr. Meadows did not need to establish those limits, but rather only had to “establish a nexus” to the duties of his federal job. Mr. Terwilliger’s argument focused on the idea that keeping the case in state court would be inappropriate because it would require a state judge to decide important matters relating to federal law, such as what the role of White House chief of staff entails.“That makes no sense,” Mr. Terwilliger said. “Those are federal questions that need to be resolved in federal court.”In addition to Judge Abudu, the panel included Chief Circuit Judge William Pryor, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Judge Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of President Barack Obama. The case concerns the concept of “removal,” which means essentially transferring a case from state to federal court; if the case was removed, Mr. Meadows would continue to face the same charges.The case against Mr. Meadows stems from a lengthy investigation by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, that led to her charging 19 people — including Mr. Trump — with racketeering and other charges related to their attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power. Four of those defendants have reached plea agreements with Ms. Willis’s office, and another four besides Mr. Meadows are seeking to have their cases moved to federal courts, including Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking Justice Department official. Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark have pleaded not guilty.To move his case to federal court, Mr. Meadows’s lawyers must show that his actions — as alleged in the indictment — were within the scope of his job duties as chief of staff, and that Mr. Meadows still counts as a federal officer even though he no longer holds that position.Lawyers with Ms. Willis’s office have argued that Mr. Meadows was taking political actions in service of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, rather than operating in his role as chief of staff. Donald Wakeford, a top prosecutor in Ms. Willis’s office, also argued on Friday that Mr. Meadows no longer has the ability to move his case to federal court because he is no longer a federal officer.The judges posed several hypotheticals to Mr. Wakeford about whether that interpretation might allow states to charge unpopular federal officials shortly after they left office. Mr. Wakeford argued that regardless of such concerns, the relevant federal law does not indicate that former federal officials can move their cases out of state court.Among the criminal acts alleged in the indictment of Mr. Meadows is a phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, between Mr. Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which Mr. Trump said he wanted to “find” nearly 12,000 more Trump votes, enough to reverse his defeat. Mr. Meadows testified in August that Mr. Trump had directed him to set up that phone call. In December 2020, Mr. Meadows also made a surprise visit to Cobb County, Ga., accompanied by Secret Service agents, intending to view an audit that was in progress there. Local officials declined to let him do so because it was not open to the public.No matter what the appeals court decides, lawyers for either side could ask the Supreme Court to take up the case, potentially enmeshing the nation’s top court in a contentious political case during an election year.The challenge Mr. Meadows faces was summed up by Judge Rosenbaum. “According to him, it seems like everything was within his official duties,” she said during the proceeding. “And that just cannot be right.” More

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      Jury in Rudy Giuliani defamation trial urged to send message: ‘Don’t do it’

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      A Washington DC jury should “send a message” to other powerful people by issuing substantial damages against Rudy Giuliani for spreading lies about two Georgia election workers, a lawyer for the pair said.“The message is don’t do it,” Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer representing Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, said in his closing statement to eight jurors on the fourth day of the defamation case. “They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Mr Giuliani has shown us over and over and over again that he will not take our clients names out of his mouth. Facts do not and will not stop him.“He’s telegraphing that he will do this again. Believe him,” he said.Gottlieb asked the jury to award Freeman and Moss each at least $24m in damages to repair the damage to their reputation Giuliani caused by spreading lies about them after the 2020 election. He urged the jury to use their best judgment to determine how much to award in additional punitive damages to award as well as damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.“Rudy Giuliani used his power to scapegoat Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss,” Gottlieb said. “He didn’t see them as human beings.”“He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election,” he added.In a reversal, Giuliani’s attorney announced he would not take the witness stand on Thursday. “We feel like these women have been through enough,” Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, said in court.In his closing statement, Sibley sought to distance Giuliani from the threats and harassment Freeman and Moss endured. Instead, he laid the blame at the far-right news outlet The Gateway Pundit which he said was the first place Freeman and Moss were identified by name and urged readers to harass them. Freeman and Moss are separately suing the outlet for defamation in a Missouri court.“More likely than not, this is the party that sort of doxxed these women,” he said.Sibley acknowledged Giuliani had wronged Moss and Freeman, but urged the jury to judge the former New York City based on the context of his whole career.“Rudy Giuliani is a good man. I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days,” he said. “The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s really a low blow. That’s not who he is.”Invoking Abraham Lincoln’s call of “malice towards none and charity for all” he said that the jury should issue more moderate damages to send a message of compassion to the country during a moment of political divisiveness. Unmentioned, of course, was that Giuliani and Donald Trump have played a key role in creating that divisiveness with vitriolic rhetoric.Todays closing arguments mark the end of a closely watched trial that is seen as another key test of the ability of defamation law to police election misinformation.Throughout the week, Moss and Freeman, gave harrowing testimony about how Giuliani’s lies upended their lives. Among other things, Moss said she was afraid to go anywhere alone and Freeman said she was afraid to give anyone her name and still wears a mask and sunglasses in public so she will not be recognized.Beryl Howell, the US district judge, has already found him liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. The only question for the eight-member jury is how much to award in damages.Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, has sought to undercut claims that Freeman and Moss need millions of dollars to repair their reputation and that they suffered harm that amounts to such a high sum.Giuliani was twice reprimanded by Howell this week for statements he made outside the courthouse. On Monday, he said he would prove what he said about Moss and Freeman was true. On Tuesday, he attacked lawyers representing Moss and Freeman.“When I testify, you’ll get the whole story and it will be definitively clear what I said was true and that whatever happened to them, which was unfortunate if other people overreacted, but everything I said about them is true,” he had said on Monday. “Of course I don’t regret it, I told the truth.”That never came to fruition. Gottlieb made sure the jury noticed.“Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, it turns out are miles and miles away from ordinary. They are heroes. After everything they went through, they stood up and they said no more,” Gottlieb said in his closing statement. “They opened themselves up to you and the public, and unlike some other people, they testified here under oath.” More

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      Suit yourself: Trump offers scraps of his indictment outfit for $4,699.53 a pop

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      Despite his claims, Donald Trump’s business career has had many more failures than successes.His record of catastrophic investments has never held Trump back, however, and now the one-term, twice-impeached, 91-time felony-charged former president has embarked on a new hustle: selling little cut-out pieces of a suit he wore during one of his arrests.“It was a great suit, believe me, a really good suit. It’s all cut up, and you’re gonna get a piece of it,” Trump said in a video announcing the sale.Trump wore a blue suit when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken at an Atlanta jail in August. The former Apprentice host has already monetized the mugshot: on his campaign website, people can buy coffee mugs, T-shirts and Christmas stockings bearing the image.The move into fabric sales is a new one, however.To buy a piece of the suit, people first have to buy 47 “digital trading cards”, each featuring an illustration of Trump, through the Collect Trump Cards website. Buyers will then receive a bit of the suit, or tie, that Trump wore when he was arrested – on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election – at Fulton county jail in August 2023.The suit, according to the website description, is “the most historically significant artifact in United States history”.The suit is described as “priceless”. People can buy a piece of it for $4,699.53.Trump, a former TV host, touted his business career as a reason why he should be elected during the 2016 presidential campaign.His efforts have included Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage and Trump Shuttle, a short-lived airline. All failed.GoTrump, a travel site, didn’t last, nor did Trump Steaks. A Trump board game was discontinued after two years, a Trump magazine folded, and Trump University was forced to settle fraud lawsuits for $25m after being accused of “swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars”.Trump has also filed for corporate bankruptcy six times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIndeed, in 2021, Forbes found that Trump, 77, would be far richer had he simply invested the inheritance he got from his father, who ran a successful, if problematic, real estate company.It is the third series of cards Trump has sold. A batch of 45,000 cards sold out in December 2022 for a total of nearly $4.4m. Trump only netted between $100,000 and $1m from the sales, Forbes reported.The cards include Trump sitting in the chair occupied by Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, and an image of Trump wearing a white cowboy hat, superimposed over an illustration of some running horses.Others show Trump as a kind of half robot, and there is one of him dressed as a Captain America-type character. One card shows Trump, who was medically exempted from the military during the Vietnam war due to a questionable diagnosis of bone spurs, dressed in army garb.It is unclear how many pieces of the suit are available. In 2018 a medical exam, conducted by a doctor-turned-Republican congressman, Trump was 6ft 3in and weighs 239lb, although when Trump claimed to weigh 215lb when he was arrested in Georgia. The former president is known to favor billowy suits with shoulder pads, but the measurements of his chest, waist and inseam are not publicly available.In any case, buyers seeking a piece of suit should beware. Business Insider found that the fine print on Collect Trump Cards includes a disclaimer that if delivery of the bit of suit “cannot be fulfilled due to an issue in the manufacturing, production, or delivery”, purchasers will have to settle for a “limited edition Trump NFT” instead. More

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      Rudy Giuliani faces third day of trial for defaming Georgia election workers

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      The third day of a federal trial against Rudy Giuliani for defamation against two Georgia election workers begins on Wednesday after a day of harrowing testimony from Shaye Moss, whose life was upended after Giuliani spread election lies about her.Moss and Ruby Freeman are suing Giuliani for his claims, from which the former New York City mayor and Trump ally has not backed down this week. After the first day of trial, Giuliani doubled down on his claims, saying they were true, leading the judge to question Giuliani’s mental fitness.Just as they have been all week, Moss, Freeman and Giuliani are in the courtroom. Moss and Freeman are sitting next to each other at a table with their lawyers. Freeman’s back is to Giuliani, who is sitting at a table parallel to them with his lawyer.Freeman is expected to testify later today.Both women are seeking up to $43m in damages over Giuliani’s false claims that accused them of fraudulently counting mail-in ballots, a sum that Giuliani’s lawyer said would be like a “death penalty” for his client.Ashlee Humphreys, a professor at Northwestern who studies social media, is the first witness on Wednesday. She is expected to testify about how she calculated the damages Moss and Freeman are entitled to.The case is seen as a test for one avenue pro-democracy groups are using to try to hold election deniers accountable for the consequences of spreading conspiracy theories. More

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      Rudy Giuliani faces trial over defamation of 2020 election workers

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      Rudy Giuliani arrived slightly late to the Washington DC federal courtroom where a defamation lawsuit seeking to force him to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages to two election workers after making inflammatory false statements about them in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Ruby Freedman and her daughter Shaye Moss, the two Black election workers from Fulton county who said they faced death threats because of Giuliani’s claims, were also in the courtroom on Monday.Giuliani has already conceded he made the defamatory statements and the US district judge Beryl Howell, who is overseeing the case, has already found him liable for defamation, so the week-long jury trial will focus on what penalty he should have to pay. Freeman and Moss are seeking between $15m and $43.5m in damages. Jury selection and opening statements are expected on Monday.The case is significant because it is one of the most aggressive and advanced efforts to get accountability from Donald Trump allies who spread lies about the election as part of the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It is one of several cases testing whether defamation law can be used as a new tool to combat misinformation. And perhaps more than any other episode in the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, it crystallizes the human toll of election denialism. Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Georgia as part of the wide-ranging case there over Trump’s efforts to turn the election.After the 2020 election, Giuliani had amplified and circulated misleading security footage he claimed showed Freeman and Moss counting ballots after tallying had ended on election night. Even after Georgia election officials quickly debunked the claim, Giuliani continued to spread the false claims.Freeman and Moss say their lives were upended as they became the subject of vicious attacks. They faced death threats, and strangers came to Freeman’s home to try to execute a “citizen’s arrest”.Freeman told the US House committee that investigated the January 6 attack that she was afraid to give her name in public. On election night in 2020, she was wearing a shirt that proudly proclaimed her name, but she now refuses to wear it in public.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name any more. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me,” she told the committee.“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Moss told Reuters in 2021 that she suffered anxiety and depression, and her son, who used a cellphone with a phone number once registered to her, started receiving death threats and began failing in school.Both women have not spoken much publicly since the 2020 election, but are expected to take the witness stand this week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiuliani has already conceded he made false statements about Freeman and Moss. But he argues that he is not responsible for the harm they suffered as a result of his false statements. “Giuliani will argue that Plaintiffs cannot show more than a de minimis relationship between their alleged harm and Giuliani’s conduct,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing in November.Giuliani has also already been sanctioned more than $200,000 for refusing to turn over documents as part of the lawsuit. Howell, the judge, also berated Giuliani’s attorney last week after Giuliani failed to show up for a hearing.He is also expected to testify during the trial, and his lawyer indicated last week that the former New York City mayor does not plan to invoke his fifth amendment rights during the proceeding.The original lawsuit, filed in December 2021, sought damages from both Giuliani and One America News, the far-right channel that spread countless pieces of misinformation after the 2020 election. Freeman and Moss settled with OAN in 2022. While the terms of the agreement haven’t been publicly disclosed, the network acknowledged on air shortly after that there was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia in 2020. More

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      What price will Rudy Giuliani pay for smearing Georgia election workers?

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      Rudy Giuliani, the politician who was once lauded as “America’s mayor” but descended into the rabbit hole of Donald Trump’s election denial lies, will face a Washington DC jury on Monday in a landmark case which could see him saddled with millions of dollars in damages.For the first time at trial, Giuliani will be confronted in a federal district court with the consequences of the conspiracy theories he disseminated as Trump’s 2020 election lawyer. He will come eye-to-eye with the mother and daughter poll workers from Georgia who claim that he destroyed their lives and caused them ongoing emotional distress by maliciously accusing them of election fraud.The stakes of the civil trial are exceptionally high. The plaintiffs are asking the jury to set damages of up to $43m as punishment for Giuliani’s “outrageous conduct”.Legal experts and democracy advocates will also be watching closely to see whether a rarely used complaint of defamation can act as a deterrent on anyone contemplating another round of election denial in next year’s presidential election and beyond. There could also be ramifications for the Rico organised crime prosecution that Giuliani is facing in Fulton county, Georgia, that also relates to his actions in the 2020 election.After jury selection and opening statements on Monday, there will be three days of testimony in the DC trial. Headlining the witness list are the poll workers themselves, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.“While nothing will fully repair all of the damages that Giuliani and his allies wreaked on our clients’ lives, livelihoods and security, they are eager and ready for their day in court to continue their fight for accountability,” said the women’s legal representatives at Protect Democracy, a non-partisan advocacy group.Freeman and Moss became household names after they gave a moving televised account to the House investigation into the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. They recounted how their lives had been turned upside down by Giuliani’s relentless attacks.“Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,” Moss, who is African American, told the hearing, invoking the history of lynching in the deep south.Giuliani has already been found liable by the judge presiding in the case, Beryl Howell, for smearing the poll workers, intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them, and engaging in a conspiracy with at least two others to defame them. It now falls to the jury to decide the scale of damages.Giuliani defamed the poll workers by accusing them falsely of criminal misdeeds during the critical count of presidential election votes in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. As one of the key swing states in the 2020 race, Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes had the potential to determine whether Trump or Joe Biden would be the next occupant of the White House.As part of the Trump team’s extensive efforts to undermine the election count and thereby foil Biden’s victory, Giuliani bore down on Freeman and Moss. He helped circulate a misleadingly edited tape of security footage from the arena which he inaccurately claimed showed them stealing votes for Biden.He propagated the “Suitcase Gate” conspiracy theory – a video that falsely claimed to show the poll workers removing phoney ballots from suitcases stored under their table, then counting them “three, four, five, six, seven times …” The court will be shown a sample of the ginger mint that Freeman passed to Moss during the counting process – Giuliani claimed it was a USB drive used to change the vote count on electronic tabulation devices.His wild claims were fully debunked by Georgia officials at the time he was making them. In June a full investigation by the state’s election board cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing and dismissed Giuliani’s fraud claims as “unsubstantiated”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite the official pushback, Giuliani continued to attack the pair. In several hours of scheduled testimony, mother and daughter are expected to describe to the jury the storm of death threats and harassment they and their families suffered – and continue to suffer – in the wake of the smear campaign.In the fallout, they were forced to flee their homes, go into hiding and change their appearance. Moss quit her job as a poll worker.Giuliani’s lawyers have indicated that he may testify in person at the trial. If he does so he will not be allowed to repeat any of the defamatory slurs about the plaintiffs, as he has already accepted that he defamed them.His lawyers have indicated that he will, though, attempt to show that his actions had minimal connection to the blizzard of violent threats and harassment that the women have endured. That way he will hope to minimize the damages awarded by the jury.Several other former members of the legal team in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign are also likely to be called upon during the trial, with their testimony drawn from depositions. They include the former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, Jenna Ellis, who has been charged alongside Giuliani in the Fulton county Rico case, and Christina Bobb.Court documents show that Ellis refused to answer questions from Freeman and Moss’s lawyers during her deposition. She pleaded the fifth amendment right to remain silent 448 times. More

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      Georgia Republicans finalize district maps to comply with judge’s order

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      Republican state lawmakers in Georgia have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order, though Democrats and advocacy groups say the new maps create one majority-Black district at the expense of another diverse district.US district judge Steve Jones ordered Georgia lawmakers to redo their redistricted maps in October after a lawsuit claimed they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black people.He gave lawmakers until 8 December to redraw maps to create “an additional majority-Black district” in west metro Atlanta. He warned “the state cannot remedy the section 2 violations found herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans”.Georgia lawmakers did not appear to heed that instruction. They created the additional majority-Black district in west Atlanta, but dismantled another district where Black voters had been joining with other racial minorities to elect the candidate of their choosing. The dismantled district is now represented by Lucy McBath, a Democrat. The plan ensures that Republicans are able to maintain a 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.It’s not legally settled whether districts with a collection of voters from various minority groups are protected under the Voting Rights Act in the way Black voters are, though critics of the Republican plan say it doesn’t fix the problem of diluting the Black vote.State representative Sam Park, Georgia’s Democratic caucus whip, said on the statehouse floor today that “it’s self-evident that the Republican party’s primary goal is to maintain political power at all costs – even to the detriment of Georgia voters’ freedoms, our representative democracy and the rule of law”.The new maps will require court approval. With candidates finalizing plans to run in these new districts next year, there’s a time crunch on the case. A 20 December hearing is scheduled to go over the new maps.Georgia Republicans planned to appeal the case while also working in a special session to comply with Jones’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Georgia redistricting case comes as several other southern states contend with similar rulings to redo their maps after facing lawsuits over Black voting power. While redistricting happens every decade and maps are usually finalized in a year or two, some of these states have slowed the process to try to keep their preferred maps for the 2024 cycle. More

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      Georgia prosecutors predict jail sentences in Trump 2020 election case

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      Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.“We have a long road ahead,” the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, wrote in one email. “Long after these folks are in jail, we will still be practicing law.”The previously unreported emails, between Willis and defense lawyers, open a window on to the endgame envisioned by prosecutors on her team – which could inform legal strategies ahead of a potential trial next year, such as approaches toward plea deal negotiations.Prosecutors are not presently expected to offer plea agreements to Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but left open the possibility of talks with other co-defendants, the Guardian previously reported.The emails also underscore the increasing breakdown in trust with a growing number of defense lawyers who have regarded prosecutors’ tactics – including Willis assuming she will win – as inappropriately aggressive and presumptuous given the case remains months from a potential verdict.The district attorney raised the prospect of defendants in prison in a 29 November exchange, which started with Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow complaining about an incomplete Giuliani transcript the defense received in discovery, according to two people with direct knowledge of the emails.Willis responded that the defense lawyers would receive the full transcript in the next production of discovery and, in increasingly tense exchanges, took offense that she was not being referred to by her formal title as well as the implicit accusation that they were withholding evidence.“No one placed me here and I have earned this title,” Willis said, apparently taking umbrage that she was not referred to specifically as the district attorney, but as a prosecutor. “I’ve never practiced law by hiding the ball, I’ve enjoyed beating folks by making sure they have the entire file.”The email took a turn when Willis added that they should remain professional because their legal careers would continue even after the election case co-defendants went to jail. Willis signed off: “yours in service”.Trump and 18 co-defendants in August originally pleaded not guilty to charges that they violated Georgia’s state racketeering statute as they sought to overturn the 2020 election. In the following weeks, four of the 18 negotiated plea deals and extricated themselves from the case.The remark about jail caused consternation with some of the defense lawyers, who have been aghast that the district attorney’s office would throw around what they took as a prison threat in a cavalier manner, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.Relations between prosecutors and defense lawyers have been particularly strained in recent weeks, people close to the case have said, mainly since several media outlets published videotaped “proffer” statements that the former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro gave as part of plea deals.The district attorney’s office had privately believed Trump’s team leaked the videos, only to be surprised when the lawyer for the former Coffee county elections official Misty Hampton acknowledged at a court hearing that he had disseminated videos to a certain news outlet.The leak of the proffer statements prompted prosecutors to seek an emergency protective order on discovery materials and to refuse to provide copies of any future proffer videos to defense lawyers, who would instead have to view them in the district attorney’s offices in Atlanta.In the separate federal 2020 election subversion case brought against Trump in Washington, the discovery materials were subject to a protective order almost as soon as Trump was charged. But special counsel prosecutors have not forced Trump’s lawyers to only view the discovery in person.The Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding in the case, ultimately agreed to impose a protective order governing the release of discovery materials marked as “sensitive”, though the threat to only have proffer videos available in the district attorney’s offices was dropped. More