U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis has denied a motion members of the media filed to reveal the identities and home addresses of the members of the jury on the trial involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“I don’t feel right if I release their names,” he said, adding that he has also faced threats for his role in the trial, according to The Hill.
Ellis also denied the media’s request to make sealed sidebar transcripts public, although he added that much of those transcripts will be made public after the trial. Ellis explained that one aspect of the transcripts will remain sealed so as not to interfere with Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian officials to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton.
The Federalist reported that CNN, along with a conglomerate of other media outlets, filed a motion Friday morning to publicly reveal the names and home addresses of those serving on the jury in the trial after jurors asked the judge questions that legal experts interpreted as favorable for Manafort’s defense attorneys and unfavorable for the prosecution.
CNN has a history of going after private individuals who do things that offend the network’s political sensibilities, like that time one of their reporters threatened to dox a Reddit user unless he (or she) was nicer to the news network. CNN also sent a correspondent earlier this year to an elderly woman’s front lawn to demand she explain herself after reportedly sharing pro-Trump memes on Facebook that were created by a Russian bot factory.
On Friday afternoon, the jury broke for the weekend without a verdict in the trial. Jury deliberations are set to resume Monday morning.
