Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Tuesday morning filed an emergency request to seal all discovery evidence, as The Washington Post reports.
Willis also appears to suggest the leak, including of videos of Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell testifying to prosecutors about efforts to overturn the 2020 election, could have come from a party associated with or directly from one of the 19 co-defendants in her massive RICO case.
On Monday, ABC News, followed by The Washington Post, published leaked bombshell videos and/or transcripts, part of confidential interviews, of Ellis and Powell, both of whom had pleaded guilty. The Post’s report also states it was able to review recordings of four statements, including those “from Ellis, lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, and Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall,” which “offered many previously undisclosed details about the effort by Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat.”
Willis says in her emergency motion that the “release of these confidential video recordings is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial, constitutes indirect communication about the facts of this case with codefendants and witnesses, and obstructs the administration of justice, in violation of the conditions of release imposed on each defendant.”
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“Going forward, the State will not produce copies of confidential video recordings of proffers to any defendant to prevent further public disclosure. Instead, defendants must come to the District Attorney’s Office to view confidential video recordings of proffers. They may take notes, but they will be prohibited from creating any recordings or reproductions.”
The Messenger reports that an attorney for co-defendant Harrison Floyd on social media Monday night called the leak, “nothing more than an attempt at TAINTING THE JURY POOL.”
In one leaked video, Ellis details how a top Trump aide allegedly told her that “the boss,” meaning then-President Donald Trump, “is not going to leave under any circumstances,” despite being told he had lost the 2020 election.
Powell, ABC News reported, in the video “explained to prosecutors her plans for seizing voting machines nationwide and claimed that she frequently communicated with Trump during her efforts to overturn the 2020 election — though both now claim she was never his attorney.”
“In the session, Powell reiterated the false assertion that Trump won the election — but acknowledged in the video that she didn’t know much about election law to begin with.”
Willis also states the “confidential video recordings were not released by the State to any party other than the Defendants charged in the indictment, pursuant to the discovery process as required by law.”
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Talking Points Memo executive editor David Kurtz earlier Tuesday morning wrote: “It’s not clear who leaked. There doesn’t seem much reason for Willis to leak it. All of the remaining defendants would be given access to the recordings in discovery, so the list of potential leakers isn’t short. As for why they leaked and whose interest it was to leak them,” he added, “it’s hard to make that assessment without know what portions of the recording were not leaked. That’s why I emphasize that these are incomplete recordings. With only a portion of them, it’s difficult to tell what impressions were sought to be created and why.”