An attorney for Donald Trump sent a “cease and desist” letter to ProPublica threatening legal action while trying to kill the award-wining nonprofit news outlet’s latest bombshell on the convicted ex-president.
“Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company,” ProPublica reported Monday. “If any benefits were intended to influence testimony, that could be a crime.”
ProPublica’s deeply-investigated report offers several stunning examples.
“One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee,” ProPublica’s Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski report. “These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.”
Trump attorney Jennifer Little, whose “testimony could prove crucial as the two sides try to make their case about Trump’s consciousness of guilt” in the Espionage Act/classified documents case, has made over a million dollars.
Little, a “former local prosecutor who started her own practice … had previously taken on far more modest cases. Highlights on her website include a biker who fell because of a pothole, a child investigated for insensitive social media comments and drunk drivers with ‘DUI’s as high as .19.’”
“Just after Little was forced to testify before the grand jury in March 2023,” ProPublica reported, “a Trump political action committee paid her $218,000, by far the largest payment she’d received while working for Trump. In the year after she became a witness, she has made at least $1.3 million from the Trump political committee, more than twice as much as she had during the year prior.”
ProPublica also reported that “Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist letter demanding this article not be published. The letter warned that if the outlet and its reporters ‘continue their reckless campaign of defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.’”
After ProPublica published its report, some suggested it could be evidence of witness tampering.
“Significant changes,” the news outlet noted, “to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.”
MSNBC host and legal correspondent Katie Phang, responding to an excerpt from the ProPublica report remarked, “If you’re not outraged, you should be.”
Also responding to an excerpt, The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein wrote: “Direct and overt witness tampering.”
Media critic and former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob commented, “Terrific story by @propublica about Team Trump paying big bucks to witnesses — which looks a whole lot like witness tampering.”
“Team Trump has a history of witness tampering,” Jacob added. “Campaign chief Paul Manafort did it, and Trump later pardoned him. Manafort still has ties with the Trump Republican Party. The best way to understand Trump is to realize that he operates like a mobster.”
ProPublica’s own report states: “Attempts to exert undue influence on witnesses have been a repeated theme of Trump-related investigations and criminal cases over the years.”
At the end of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack’s public hearings in 2022, Vice Chair Liz Cheney “suggested members of Trump’s inner circle were engaging in witness tampering via phone calls and messages to some witnesses,” MSNBC reported at the time.
