Former federal prosecutor and current MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner told SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah that former President Donald Trump is a greater threat to witnesses than some of the murderers he’s tried — and said Trump needs to be locked up pretrial.
On Friday’s editing of The Dean Obeidallah ShowKirschner spoke to Obeidallah for the first time since the arrest and arraignment in Georgia.
Obeidallah and Kirschner agreed Trump is a danger to witnesses and court officials because of his “cult” of supporters, and that locking him up would reduce that threat:
DEAN OBEIDALLAH: So, Glenn, you’ve had some murder, a lot of murder cases. You’ve done it. And I’m sure organized crime was involved. Is the threat to jurors and witnesses and Donald Trump, does that eclipse the concerns you had in cases in the past that you actually handled?
GLENN KIRSCHNER: So I tried a series of RICO cases dealing in that very courthouse where it was a criminal organization that had killed 30 people over the course of about ten years. They killed their competitors. They killed witnesses. They killed members of their own crew when they tried to leave the crew, because nobody gets out alive, because then you run the risk of that person flipping and snitching.
So we had an anonymous jury because of the danger to the jurors. We were in the secure courtroom, which they have since disbanded, which that well of the court was separated by bulletproof glass from the audience. We had our defendants wearing 100,000 volt stun belts under their suits because Judge Lamberth had ordered that for security reasons.
And guess what? They still got to some of the jurors and some of the jurors had to be dismissed mid-trial. I have tried cases involving the sort of most rigorous security measures ever in the District of Columbia.
I have an even graver concern for Donald Trump because his reach is so broad, his followers are so rabid at times and so detached from reality. I’m sorry, this is a cult. And so, yes, I am concerned that the judges have not yet stepped up to address the danger, the ongoing danger, the demonstrated danger of Donald Trump to witnesses, to jurors, to prosecutors, to judges and to their families. I hope at some point the judges realize that Donald Trump is a danger to the community and he should be detained pending trial because that will begin to neutralize the threat, in part because you’ll take his megaphone away. I think we’re going to be having that conversation in the months to come.
Watch above via SiriusXM’s The Dean Obeidallah Show.
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