"Blatantly unlawful": Legal experts say Trump is "witness tampering in real time" on Truth Social

Gabriella Ferrigine
·4 min read
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Donald Trump Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Former President Donald Trump on Monday said that a witness in the Georgia election conspiracy probe should not testify ahead of an expected indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Trump fired off a missive on Truth Social after former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan confirmed that he was invited to testify before the grand jury on Tuesday.

"I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton Country Grand Jury," Trump wrote. "He shouldn't. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia. He refused to have a Special Session to find out what went on, became very unpopular with Republicans (I refused to endorse him!), and fought the TRUTH all the way. A loser, he went to FCNN!"

The ex-president followed his warning to Duncan with an all-caps rant about his role in the 2020 presidential election, which he was recently criminally indicted for by special counsel Jack Smith.

"WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL THE FULTON COUNTRY GRAND JURY THAT I DID NOT TAMPER WITH THE ELECTION," Trump fumed. "THE PEOPLE THAT TAMPERED WITH IT WERE THE ONES WHO RIGGED IT, AND SADLY, PHONEY FANI WILLIS, WHO HAD SHOCKINGLY ALLOWED ATLANTA TO BECOME ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS CITIES ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, HAS NO INTEREST IN SEEING THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE AVAILABLE, OR FINDING OUT WHO THE PEOPLE WHO COMMITTED THIS CRIME ARE. SHE ONLY WANTS TO 'GET TRUMP.' I WOULD BE HAPPY TO SHOW THIS INFO TO THE G.J."

Former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, tweeted that Trump was effectively "witness tampering in real time."

"He is now taunting grand jury witnesses in Georgia," tweeted attorney Bradley Moss. "Just begging for trouble from whatever judge gets assigned that case if, as expected, Willis indicts him tomorrow."

"This is blatantly unlawful stuff," argued Georgia State Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis. "Add witness tampering to the potential predicate acts for a Georgia RICO charge."

MSNBC legal analyst Katie Phang predicted that "This is going to go so very badly for Trump...."

Former President & Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill, argued that a different defendant would be treated differently.

"Imagine an accused gang leader posting this on social media after public reports about a witness to be called before the grand jury?" she wrote. "Would such a defendant be jailed or charged with witness tampering? In the alternative Trump is actively seeking to poison the jury pool."

Trump's Monday post comes mere days after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — the Obama-era appointee who was randomly assigned to oversee his election conspiracy case in Washington, D.C. — cautioned Trump during a Friday hearing to stop making repeated antagonizing statements.

Instead, the former president ignored Chutkan's advisory, unleashing another torrent of Truths on Monday, this time attacking the judge herself.

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"The following TRUTH is a quote by highly partisan Judge Tanya Chutkan, angrily sentencing a J-6er in October of 2022. She obviously wants me behind bars. VERY BIASED AND UNFAIR!" Trump wrote in an early morning Truth, before citing Chutkan's sentencing:

"'I SEE THE VIDEOTAPES. I SEE THE FOOTAGE OF THE FLAGS AND THE SIGNS THAT PEOPLE WERE CARRYING AND THE HATS THAT THEY WERE WEARING, AND THE GARB. AND THE PEOPLE WHO MOBBED THE CAPITOL WERE THERE IN FEALTY, IN LOYALTY, TO ONE MAN, NOT TO THE CONSTITUTION, OF WHICH MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO COME BEFORE ME SEEM WOEFULLY IGNORANT; NOT TO THE IDEALS OF THIS COUNTRY, AND NOT TO THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY. IT'S A BLIND LOYALTY TO ONE PERSON WHO, BY THE WAY, REMAINS FREE TO THIS DAY.' Judge Tanya Chutkan!"

Last week, Trump took aim at Willis when he advanced an unfounded lie that the no-nonsense Georgia DA had an "affair" with a "gang member," according to Rolling Stone. "They say there's a young woman — a young racist in Atlanta — they say she was after a certain gang and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member. And this is a person who wants to indict me […] wants to indict me for a perfect phone call," Trump claimed of Willis during a New Hampshire campaign event, in a massively misrepresented interpretation of a case Willis oversaw in 2019.

Willis called the allegations "derogatory and false."

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about Fani Willis' probe