Prosecutors specifically cited Trump’s attacks on his former CISA director Chris Krebs, Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman and former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan as examples of figures who faced harassment as a result of being singled out by the former president on social media.
The Justice Department attorneys also pointed to Trump’s repeated incendiary attacks on Smith himself, another special counsel prosecutor Jay Bratt, and on Chutkan. They accused Trump of spreading a “knowing lie” by accusing Bratt of meeting with Biden White House officials when he was in fact conducting a “routine” interview of a career military official stationed at the White House.
Prosecutors also repeatedly complained about Trump’s pointed criticism of the city that is home to those expected to decide his guilt or innocence in the case, Washington, D.C., and his public suggestions that any jury that is seated in the capital will be biased.
“No way I can get a fair trial, or even close to a fair trial, in Washington, D.C.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. “I am calling for a federal takeover of this filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation….The federal takeover is very unpopular with potential area jurors, but necessary for greatness, & for all the world to see!”
