I was wondering who leaked the plea agreement “proffer” videos from the Atlanta Trump cases. I just assumed it was Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office. I mean, who wouldn’t, after watching the Manhattan DAs office and everyone other law enforcement agency connected in any way to a Trump prosecution leak like sieves.

It seemed as if it was the lawyers for one of the defendants taking a plea deal who did so – Harrison Floyd. Floyd’s lawyers are denying it, claiming a typo in a follow-up email.

Willis is asking for a renewed emergency request for a protective order. Apparently the “renewed” refers to them having requested such an order previously but it hadn’t been granted. This go ’round they are citing the video releases as an attempt at “witness intimidation.”

Here's the full emergency request for a protective order.

The filing notes that earlier today a defense attorney for Harrison Floyd sent an email saying "It was Harrison Floyd's team." Floyd's attorney then followed up saying that was a typo.https://t.co/uxoeuQuCPI

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) November 14, 2023

Willis is kicking up quite a fuss over it.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s office is seeking emergency safeguards after recorded interviews of four election subversion defendants were leaked to the media, setting off a heated feud between attorneys in the sprawling case.

In a new court filing Tuesday, Fulton prosecutors asked Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee for an order protecting all discovery materials. They want to prohibit sensitive and confidential information from being shared beyond defendants and their attorneys.

Prosecutors said in the filing that they were not behind the leaks of testimony by Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Scott Hall and Ken Chesebro. ABC News was the first to report about the contents of the interviews late Monday, and several other news organizations, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Washington Post, also obtained video of the testimony. The interviews with prosecutors — known as proffers — are a preview of what witnesses might say if they testify at trial.

Prosecutors said the leaks were tantamount to witness intimidation while attorneys for some of the defendants countered the DA’s proposed protective order would restrict their ability to mount a robust defense.

Ted Goodman, a Giuliani political adviser, said Willis “wants to shut everyone up by weaponizing the protective order process, so the defendants can’t properly defend themselves and so that her office is the only one that can continue to leak.”

Folks familiar with trials point out protective orders are relatively rare in criminal proceedings, and that the judge in this case had not acted upon Willis’ previous request for one. Defense attorneys said her request was too broad. They’ve offered their own version for the judge to consider during the Wednesday afternoon hearing he scheduled to hear the issue.

…In a separate court filing, attorneys for defendant David Shafer argued what Willis proposed was too broad. They said Willis failed to meet her legal burden of showing a “substantial threat of physical or economic harm to a particular witness” and urged McAfee to oppose the DA’s request.

Shafer’s team provided the text of an alternative protective order should McAfee deem it necessary, which it said was backed by attorneys for Trump and four other defendants. Their proposal would require the DA’s office to designate certain evidence as ‘sensitive materials’ and give defendants 14 days to contest the designation.

The DA’s office said that going forward, it would not produce copies of proffers to other defense teams as part of the discovery process to prevent future public disclosure. Instead, it said defense teams would have to visit the DA’s office to view the recordings confidentially.

“They may take notes, but they will be prohibited from creating any recordings or reproductions,” prosecutors wrote.

But there is speculation in some quarters that the DAs “emergency” isn’t so much connected to worry about witnesses being targeted and intimidated as her case being compromised. For one thing, lawyer Sidney Powell’s – aka “The Kraken” – video actually bolsters Trump’s assertion that he believed he had won.

…The leaked material includes videos of on-camera statements from former Trump attorneys Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as Atlanta-based bail bondsman Scott Hall.

In Powell’s leaked testimony, she says that Trump really believed he had won the election, which could help Trump’s defense.

If the man honestly believed he had won, as Ms Powell says in her proffer, does Willis have a crime?

…In the video of Ms. Powell, she portrays herself and the former president as genuinely convinced that he won the 2020 election. That unwavering conviction will be of great interest to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, as it could counter efforts by the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, to prove that Mr. Trump knew he lost, but nevertheless persisted in illegal efforts to reverse the result.

At stake is a bedrock principle of the common law, captured in the Latin as actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means, “a guilty act does not make one guilty unless his mind is guilty.” Lawyers use the phrase mens rea for short. That translates to “guilty mind,” and means that to secure a prosecution, the government must show that a defendant possessed the requisite intent. The Supreme Court explains that “an injury is criminal only if inflicted knowingly.”

Now Ms. Powell tells prosecutors that both she and the president she served, President Trump, believe “instincts told him he had been defrauded, that the election was a big fraud.” She cites his “general instincts that something wasn’t right here” and adds, “I didn’t think he had lost. I saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.”

Likewise, in the video testimony of Jenna Ellis, while the headline grabbing line coming out of it was her assertion that Trump aide Dan Scavino had told her Trump “would never leave,” the fact was he did.

…Another concern, surfaced in these pages yesterday, is that the clips that have surfaced thus far do not bolster the district attorney’s case. The one featuring Ms. Powell seems to advance Mr. Trump’s position that he truly believed the election was stolen, and thus lacked the requisite mens rea to be convicted of attempting to overturn it.

A second video, of Ellis, references comments made by an aide to Mr. Trump, Dan Scavino. Mr. Scavino claimed that Mr. Trump, whom he called “the boss,” would not leave the White House even after his defeat. Mr. Scavino, though, has not been charged, making such an observation difficult to stand up in court. Mr. Trump, after all, did leave the White House on January 20, 2021.

So, besides the hearsay aspect of it – Ellis got it from Scavino and did not hear Trump himself say it – there was no there there. 45 departed the pattern on schedule, under his own power, and without a fuss.

None of this helps Fani Willis. Which may be the real reason why she’s making it incredibly hard for defense teams to access the videos, and trying to shut down the inconvenient leaks.