A federal judge on Thursday ordered an anonymous jury in Donald Trump’s sexual assault civil trial next month, citing the former president’s call for protests as an indictment looms in a separate investigation.
As reported by The Hill, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the jurors need protection from harassment, referencing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and Trump’s various statements attacking jurors and officials involved in other cases.
Trump is set to go to trial late next month after author E. Jean Carroll accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s. Trump has denied Carroll’s claims, saying that “she is not his type.”
“Mr. Trump’s quite recent reaction to what he perceived as an imminent threat of indictment by a grand jury sitting virtually next door to this Court was to encourage ‘protest’ and to urge people to ‘take our country back,’” Kaplan wrote in his decision, according to The Hill.
“That reaction reportedly has been perceived by some as incitement to violence. And it bears mention that Mr. Trump repeatedly has attacked courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters,” the ruling continued.
“If jurors’ identities were disclosed, there would be a strong likelihood of unwanted media attention to the jurors, influence attempts, and/or of harassment or worse of jurors by supporters of Mr. Trump,” Kaplan ruled.
The judge went on to reference Trump’s recent attacks on the foreperson of a Georgia grand jury investigating the former president. The foreperson sat down for interviews with multiple media outlets after the grand jury’s report was partially released and suggested a number of indictments would come out of the investigation.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump called for the removal of every top official investigating him.
