Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s team asked a judge to place limits on Donald Trump’s access to evidence in the criminal case against the former president.
Catherine McCaw, an assistant district attorney, submitted a filing on Tuesday that reportedly seeks to prevent Trump from reviewing certain sensitive material without his lawyers present and block the former president from making copies of those records. The filing also requests that Trump be barred from publicizing the prosecution’s evidence in the discovery phase leading up to the trial.
Trump being under federal investigation for his handling of classified materials “gives rise to significant concern that defendant will similarly misuse grand jury and other sensitive materials here,” McCaw wrote, according to The New York Times.
The publication said a lawyer for Trump declined to comment. The judge overseeing the case, Juan Manuel Merchan, did not issue an immediate ruling on the requests. McCaw asked for a hearing next week.
Bragg has accused Trump of trying to cover up hush-money payments, including to adult film star Stormy Daniels, in a bid to conceal damaging information as part of a “catch-and-kill” scheme to influence the 2016 election. Trump, who is months into a 2024 presidential campaign, denies any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
McCaw also claimed that the former president may attack witnesses and others involved in the case.
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Trump “has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him,” McCaw wrote, according to the Associated Press. This behavior puts “those individuals and their families at considerable safety risk,” the prosecutor added.
In a lawsuit Bragg’s lawyers filed to block Trump probe-focused subpoenas from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), a challenge that has since been dropped, the complaint said Trump “in particular has threatened New York officials with violent and racist vitriol.” As an example, the suit mentioned Trump calling Bragg, who is black, a “SOROS BACKED ANIMAL,” and a Truth Social post appearing to show Trump “threateningly” wielding a baseball bat next to an image of Bragg, among other things.