Former President Trump appeared to delete a social media post on Tuesday morning within an hour of the initial post complaining that his defense team did not have enough time to prepare the next witness in his hush money criminal trial.
In a statement posted to his Truth Social platform at 7:30 a.m., Trump said: Said He said, “I just recently learned who today’s witness is.”
“This is unprecedented and there is no time for lawyers to prepare,” the former president wrote in a now-deleted post. “No judge has ever conducted a case in such a biased and partisan manner.”
He also began attacking the judge in the case.
“He’s so twisted and so contradictory that he’s even stripped me of my First Amendment rights. Now he’s threatening to put me in jail, but they don’t have a case – According to virtually every legal scholar and expert, this is it! Why aren’t the fake news media reporting on his conflict?” Trump said.
The former president’s team has a list of potential witnesses, but they won’t know until the last minute who will take the stand. Prosecutors would normally issue a longer warning as a courtesy, but they say they did not do so in this case because of President Trump’s recent posts about witnesses.
“We don’t know yet who our next witness will be,” Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche told the court shortly before the end of Monday’s trial.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass indicated that he planned to notify the defense about the next witness shortly after the trial concluded yesterday.
“I don’t like the impression that we’re somehow using the defense as a punching bag,” Steinglass told the judge.
The news comes after Trump was recently charged with violating a gag order imposed by Judge Juan Machan, who is overseeing the case. President Trump is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money he paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.
Clark Brewster confirmed to The Hill that his client, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, will be called as a witness in Tuesday’s trial.
The Hill’s Zach Schoenfeld contributed.
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