Fox regular Andrew McCarthy whined about how terribly unfair it is that Trump’s defense team isn’t being allowed to know who the witnesses are until a day ahead of time in his election interference trial in Manhattan so that Trump can harass them ahead of the fact on his Truth Social network.
Here’s more on that from the Independent:
Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s historic hush money trial have refused to hand over a list of witnesses in the case in a bid to save them from Truth Social attacks by the former president. […]
On Thursday 18 April – before the first witness, David Pecker, took the stand on Monday – Mr Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles asked for the name of at least one witness that prosecutors intended on introducing the following week.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass explained that his office would normally hand over such information to the defence, but that they were reluctant to do so in this high-profile case because of Mr Trump’s penchant for lashing out online at witnesses and others involved in the case.
“Mr Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses,” he said. “We’re not telling him who the witnesses are.”
After the defence voiced some disappointment, Judge Merchan responded: “I can’t fault them for that.”
“Whether you get the name or not, you’re not going to delay the trial. You won’t,” he added said, promising that he wouldn’t order the prosecution to turn over the list.
Prosecutors did, however, agree to provide the name of a witness the day before that person is likely to testify. But this promise came with a caveat: if the former president publicly discusses that person, prosecutors wouldn’t continue to share the witnesses ahead of time.
Which led to this hand-wringing on this Friday’s America’s Newsroom on Fox:
BREAM: We talked earlier about the fact that the defense team has been pushing for more information about which witnesses are coming next. I mean, generally, you need that to prepare, but there has been some hesitation to force the prosecution to do that going into the weekend. What do you think happens on that front?
MCCARTHY: Well, I think it’s pretty bad that the judge has not forced the prosecutors to at least tell them who the next two or three witnesses are. Now, this is all posturing over the gag order, and the theory behind the gag order, which is kind of just an adoption of Democratic partisan talking points, is that even if Trump doesn’t say things that are overtly threatening about witnesses, that his statements are kind of the dog whistle to all his supporters out there to harass witnesses, and therefore, they can’t afford to let those names out.
I really think that at this point, there’s so much pressure on Trump’s or so much attrition of Trump’s due process rights, not just within the four corners of this case, but the cumulative effect of all these cases, makes it very difficult for him to prepare a defense in any single one of them.
And now, if you’re going to enforce this gag order in a way that says we have to withhold the names of the witnesses, so that the lawyers go into the weekend where they have to prepare for next week’s trial, and they’re not being told which witnesses are coming next and who to prepare for cross-examination, that’s really not a fair process.
But it doesn’t seem that Judge Merchan is as troubled about it, as a number of us are with respect to president Trump’s due process rights.
BREAM: Yeah, it makes a tough round of trial prep when you don’t know what you’re prepping, who you’re prepping for.
Yeah, poor Trump. It’s not like he’s brought this on himself or anything. We’ve seen over and over again that Trump and his supporters don’t have any qualms about harassing and making death threats to anyone that crosses them. McCarthy wants to just wash all of that away and pretend it’s not happening and that supposedly Trump’s the real victim here.
It’s pathetic revisionist history and the same thing they’ve all done with January 6th. Gaslighting is all they’ve got left, because there is no defense of the indefensible. They all know Trump is a menace, but none of them are ever going to say it out loud.
