The prosecutor who secured the first conviction of a former U.S. president argued that Donald Trump should still be subjected to rules meant to protect prosecutors and jurors from his “inflammatory public attacks,” citing a wave of threats against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, his family and DA employees this year.
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in connection with a hush money scheme on May 30, and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is set to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the GOP convention.
A new filing from Bragg’s team, signed by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo, includes affidavits from New York Police Department Sergeant Nicholas Pistilli, who said that the NYPD’s Threat Assessment & Protection Unit had logged 61 threat cases this year against Bragg or his family and employees, with the majority coming in in the last three months.
He cited examples that read “we will kill you all,” “you are dead,” “Your life is done” and “RIP,” as well as “a post showing sniper shots on people involved in this case or a family member of such a person, and a post disclosing the home address of a DA Office employee.”
Bomb threats were also made to the residences of two people involved in the case on April 15, the first day of the trial, Pistilli wrote. The DA also forwarded nearly 500 emails and phone calls for security review just since April, he wrote.
The DA’s filing cited reporting from NBC News that showed Trump’s guilty verdict had sparked a wave of violent rhetoric targeting prosecutors, the judge and jurors who agreed there was no reasonable doubt that Trump had committed 34 felonies.
The DA noted that nothing prevents Trump from “broadly criticizing the verdict, the criminal proceeding, the District Attorney, this court and more — and indeed, defendant has engaged in a flood of such criticisms both during the trial and after the guilty verdict.”
The DA said that Trump’s motion to terminate the gag order “once again includes a number of categorically false accusations,” including that the DA is engaged in a conspiracy with others to “restrict the defendant’s speech at an upcoming presidential debate,” an accusation that has “no factual basis” and is “a lie,” prosecutors wrote.
“These knowing falsehoods are just the latest examples of defendant’s patent disrespect for the rule of law and the impartial administration of justice,” prosecutors wrote. “As defendant’s continued conduct makes clear, the need to protect participants in this criminal proceeding and the integrity of the criminal justice process from defendant’s attacks remains critically important.”
The DA’s office argues that the gag order should remain in place when it comes to attorneys, DA staff and family members, and that the gag order should remain in place when it comes to jurors. But they say that Trump should be able to speak about trial witnesses.
“Now that the jury has delivered a verdict, however, the compelling interest in protecting the witnesses’ ability to testify without interference is no longer present,” Bragg’s office wrote. “The relevant balancing of interests has thus shifted from the time that this Court issued the orders restricting defendant’s extrajudicial statements.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
