Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has issued a protective order on evidence in Georgia’s election interference case.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office filed a motion on Tuesday to prevent further leaks of information. The motion came a day after national media outlets obtained confidential proffer videos of two former defendants, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, telling prosecutors what they know about the case against former President Donald Trump and others.
In the video, Powell talked about her plan to seize voting machines nationwide. She paid for forensic investigators to go into Coffee County Elections Office and download voter data from the machines.
Ellis discussed a phone call she had with senior Trump adviser Dan Scavino. She said that Scavino told her that Trump had no plans to leave the White House after he lost the 2020 election.
“And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave,’” Ellis said of the alleged Dec. 19 conversation with Scavino. “And I said, ‘what do you mean?’ And he said ‘well, the boss’, meaning President Trump -- and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him -- he said, ‘the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.’”
On Wednesday, an attorney representing one of the remaining 15 co-defendants in the Georgia election indictment admitted to leaking the video of pre-trial testimony.
Brunswick Attorney Jonathan Miller admitted in court that he is the one who leaked the proffer videos to one media outlet. Miller is the attorney for former Coffee County Elections Supervisor and co-defendant Misty Hampton.
In court, Miller said he felt the public had a right to see the videos. No actions or sanctions were taken against him and he argued against the protective order requested by the Fulton DA’s office to prevent further leaks.
Most of the defense attorneys for the other co-defendants consented to the protective order as proposed by David Shafer, a co-defendant and the former chair of the Georgia GOP.
At a hearing Wednesday, Judge McAfee agreed that the case needed some kind of protective order.
“We’ve already seen what may happen if a protective order isn’t put in place which is onerous, logistical burdens that we’re going to have to discuss, and I think a protective order mitigates, if not solves that entirely,” McAfee said.
The order allows the state to determine which evidence is too sensitive for public release. Defense attorneys will instead go to the courthouse to view protected evidence.
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