Special counsel Jack Smith’s team is accusing former President Donald Trump of threatening Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, after an ABC News report on Tuesday detailed some of what Meadows allegedly told investigators about Trump and the 2020 presidential election, including that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks following the election that allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless. …

In a filing Wednesday night to the judge presiding over Trump’s federal election interference case in Washington, Smith’s team said Trump’s “harmful” post on Truth Social was trying to “send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case.”

[This is nonsense on stilts. I think Trump would do better to keep his mouth shut while his cases are ongoing, but there is nothing threatening in his post. Trump calls him a liar, as well as one of several “weaklings and cowards,” but Trump is running for office and wants to respond to the leaked testimony in the public record. An indictment does not suspend any American’s First Amendment rights. — Ed]