Republican Witness Tampering Scandals

Coerced a court clerk to withhold testimony in a case against her boss and fellow Republican Robert Jenkins Franklin

Unsuccessfully tried to bribe an underage male victim of his son's sexual assault to keep him from having to face any legal consequences for his actions

Coerced the chief clerk for his office into signing a false affidavit in an attempt to skirt accountability in a civil lawsuit he was involved with

Illegally contacted a witness he was ordered to refrain from speaking with and was ordered to be held behind bars until he's sentenced for a separate crime he pled guilty to

Illegally operated his private business out of the mayor's office where he utilized public resources and personnel to improperly obtain government permits that enriched him personally and then encouraged at least one witness to lie to investigators if they were questioned

Secretly recorded two of his employees while they worked without their knowledge for months and later fired them without cause because he baselessly suspected they had helped the authorities with a criminal case he was under indictment for

Urged his longtime personal assistant to lie to federal authorities investigating his illegal retention of classified documents by telling her point-blank "you don't know anything about the boxes" which CNN chief legal analyst Elie Honig characterized as "textbook obstruction of justice" and "textbook witness tampering" that has the protentional to be "really devastating" for Trump

Brazenly called for the former Lt. Governor of Georgia to refuse to testify before a grand jury criminally investigating him for trying to overturn the 2020 election results in the state which multiple legal experts characterized as "witness tampering in real time"

Coached a witness to obstruct justice and achieve a legal outcome he supposedly desired by giving them false information that prosecutors contend was meant to affect their testimony

Pressured a sexual abuse victim's elderly parents to convince their son to retract his accusation that he knew about rampant sexual abuse by a team doctor he worked with and turned a blind eye to it for years

Was indicted for official misconduct in office and tampering with a witness in an apparent attempt to cover his tracks

Personally attempted to contact a 1/6 Committee witness presumably to pressure them to not disclose any damaging information about him when they testified before the committee

Strongly hinted that he would pardon people convicted of crimes related to the 1/6 insurrection by saying he'll be "looking at them very, very seriously," but only if they didn't cooperate with authorities

Punched a detainee in the head multiple times with a closed fist while they were shackled to a bench and returned a short time later to punch him in the head a second time before spitting on him and later asked corrections officers who witnessed the assault to lie about what they saw to investigators

Schemed to cover up evidence of his acceptance of bribes by lying to federal authorities who confronted him and "counseled" his coconspirator how to mislead federal investigators on multiple occasions without knowing that he was working as a cooperating witness

Lied under oath to the House Intelligence Committee about his contacts with WikiLeaks around the time they released stolen emails the Russian government hacked from Hillary Clinton's server, falsely named Randy Credico as his "back-channel" to the head of WikiLeaks in a subsequent letter to the committee and then urged Credico to either back up his lie or invoke his Fifth Amendment right to stay silent

Used a government-issued credit card for personal expenses including gasoline, claimed mileage for trips that he used a government-owned vehicle for over a yearslong period, pressured a witness to lie to federal investigators and lied to investigators himself

Voted in a district he no longer resided in and later unsuccessfully tried to bribe a local Housing Authority employee into falsifying a letter to election officials that attested he had only temporarily moved out of the district in exchange for a donation to the county Housing Authority

Illegally used his family, employees and friends as "straw donors" to donate $100k each to two political candidates and later interfered with the criminal case by attempting to influence a government witness

Threatened to kill his boss's campaign manager and her dog if she went through with testifying in her trial which scared her so much that she requested police protection from him

Urged his subordinate and woman he was having an extramarital affair with to lie to investigators about their sexual relationship

Offered to forgive one of his sexual assault victim's debt owed to him if her mother agreed to not pursue charges against him and urged another victim to lie to the police when they questioned her about his assault

Threatened to murder a witness in his boss's bribery trial if they testified against her at trial