Georgia judge orders jurors’ identities be kept secret in Trump trial

The state judge overseeing former President Trump’s criminal case in Georgia ordered Monday that the trial jurors’ identities be kept private.

The order grants a request from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D), who raised concerns about jurors’ safety and the potential for doxxing — the publishing of private contact information — given the significant publicity surrounding the case.

But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee did narrow the language of the restrictions in response to First Amendment concerns raised by a coalition of media organizations.

His order mandates that jurors be identified only by their number in court proceedings.

“No party shall disclose during the pendency of the trial any juror/prospective juror information that would reveal a juror’s/prospective juror’s identity, including names, addresses, telephone numbers, or identifying employment information,” it states.

The order also says that “no person shall videotape, photograph, draw in a realistic or otherwise identifiable manner or otherwise record images, statements, or conversations of jurors/prospective jurors in any manner” that would violate an existing ban on recording jurors in Georgia’s court system.

McAfee had scheduled a hearing Tuesday morning to discuss the matter, but it will no longer be held. 

Prosecutors had raised the concerns after the grand jury, which voted to indict Trump and 18 others in the case last month, received threats upon their names being made public.

Willis’s office noted that the grand jurors’ purported addresses were shared on far-right forums. Prosecutors also shared with the judge that Willis, her family and other prosecutors had faced threats and doxxing.

“Based on the doxing of Fulton County grand jurors and the Fulton County District Attorney, it is clearly foreseeable that trial jurors will likely be doxed should their names be made available to the public,” Willis’s office wrote in the request.

“If that were to happen, the effect on jurors’ ability to decide the issues before them impartially and without outside influence would undoubtedly be placed in jeopardy, both placing them in physical danger and materially affecting all of the Defendants’ constitutional rights to a fair and impartial jury,” it added.

Two of Trump’s co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, are set to go to trial beginning Oct. 23 after they invoked their right to a speedy trial.

The former president and the other 16 defendants will be tried later, though the judge has not yet set a date.

The defendants face a combined 41 counts over accusations of entering a months-long conspiracy to unlawfully keep Trump in power following the 2020 election. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty.