Sidney Powell during a recorded proffer session that was leaked to ABC News (World News Tonight/screengran), Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks in the Fulton County Government Center during a news conference on Aug. 14, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
The district attorney prosecuting the Donald Trump election racketeering (RICO) case filed an “emergency” request for a protective order on Tuesday, the day after “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell and former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis’ “confidential video recordings” were leaked to ABC News and others.
Those proffer videos, recorded as part of the lawyers’ guilty pleas, included details as serious as a conversation Ellis said she had with Trump White House aide Dan Scavino at a post-2020 election Christmas Party, in which Scavino allegedly said that “the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.” During her leaked session, Sidney Powell acknowledged that she didn’t know anything about election law, but said “I understand fraud from having been a prosecutor for 10 years, and knew generally what the fraud suit should be if the evidence showed what I thought it showed.”
The Washington Post separately reported out revelations related to the proffers of attorney Ken Chesebro and bail bondsman Scott Hall.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis (D) on Tuesday said that the leaks did not come from the state and were “clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial [.]”
The leak of the proffers, Willis stated, “constitutes indirect communication about the facts of this case with codefendants and witnesses, and obstructs the administration of justice, in violation of the conditions of release imposed on each defendant.”
Jenna Ellis leaked proffer session (ABC News/screengrab)
The DA said that is why she was asking Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to enter, on an “emergency basis,” a “protective order over all discovery materials produced by the State to any defendant in this matter in order to protect witnesses and to safeguard sensitive and confidential information.”
“These confidential video recordings were not released by the State to any party other than the Defendants charged in the indictment, pursuant to the discovery process as required by law,” Willis’ motion said.
Where did the leaks come from? Most interestingly, Todd Andrew “T.A.” Harding, an attorney for defendant Harrison William Prescott Floyd, said in an email thread between prosecutors and defense lawyers scrambling over media leaks that “It was Harrison Floyd’s team.”
In the exhibit, you can see Harding’s email and special prosecutor Nathan Wade saying, “The State had nothing to do with leaking any information to the media!” Former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow was also on the email thread.
Sadow had asked the following:
Prosecutors
It appears that ABC News, CNN, and the Washington Post have obtained leaked copies of the video proffers of Powell, Ellis, and Chesebro. The proffers did not come from Jennifer or me, or anyone connected to my defense team.
Please state for the record whether the prosecution or anyone connected to the prosecution team had any hand in the disclosure of the proffers to the media.
Thank you.
Steve Sadow
Willis’ filing said, however, that Harding claimed his initial email contained a “typo” and that Floyd’s defense team wasn’t actually responsible for the media leaks. From Willis’ motion:
Counsel for Defendant Harrison William Prescott Floyd then sent a subsequent e-mail stating that his prior e-mail was a “typo” and that Defendant Floyd’s team did not communicate with the media.
The district attorney said prosecutors will no longer “produce copies of confidential video recordings of proffers to any defendant to prevent further public disclosure.” Willis asked Judge McAfee to temporarily bar disclosure of discovery materials and to schedule an emergency hearing for the purpose of making that a permanent order.
Law&Crime reached out to Harding to ask what the “typo” was and if he meant to say “It wasn’t Harrison Floyd’s team.”
Read the DA’s filing here.
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