Donald Trump has been quietly waging — and losing — a court battle in recent weeks to prevent former aides from testifying to a grand jury. Now, a federal judge is considering unsealing secret court documents detailing the former president’s effort to prevent former aides from providing testimony about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
As reported by politico, “Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell on Wednesday asked the Justice Department to weigh in on unsealing requests made by two media organizations: POLITICO on Oct. 18, and the New York Times on Oct. 21.”
“Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, testified before a grand jury last Thursday just hours after a federal appeals court panel rejected a last-ditch appeal by Trump lawyers seeking to raise executive privilege concerns about the appearance,” the report says.
The rejection of Trump’s attempts to block testimony from his former Trump aides was just the latest defeat handed to him by the federal courts.
Short was at the courthouse for more than three hours on Oct. 13. After he left court, the Supreme Court — without any noted dissent — rebuffed Trump’s first effort to involve the justices in the separate criminal investigation into his storage of White House records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
That defeat followed other high court rebuffs of Trump dating back to the 2020 election, as well as rulings that cleared the way for local prosecutors in New York to obtain his financial records and for House investigators to get White House records relating to Jan. 6.
It also comes as Trump’s lawyers were served with the subpoena issued to the former president by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Read the full report at Politico.
