All proceedings done in front of a grand jury are entirely secret. It is not some sinister plot to get around the target of the investigation. It is actually meant to protect the defendant. If the government doesn’t get an indictment and file charges, it would be awful to smear the person’s reputation. But occasionally, it can drive a person into acute paranoia and anxiety if that person knows a grand jury is empaneled and is hearing from witnesses who have testified.

Trump knows that a grand jury is investigating his January 6th attempt to steal the election, and he’s worried, worried enough to file some highly unusual motions. According to CNN:

Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys are fighting a secret court battle to block a federal grand jury from gathering information from an expanding circle of close Trump aides about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, people briefed on the matter told CNN. Under grand jury secrecy rules, the legal dispute is under seal, with no public documents to show the state of play.

The high-stakes legal dispute – which included the appearance of three attorneys representing Trump at the Washington, DC, federal courthouse on Thursday afternoon – is the most aggressive step taken by the former President to assert executive and attorney-client privileges in order to prevent some witnesses from sharing information in the criminal investigation events surrounding January 6, 2021.

Throughout his entire life, Donald Trump has done everything possible to avoid having the truth about him come out. His ubiquitous use of NDAs, all the claims to privilege, the refusal to let anyone testify in the impeachments, and firing those that did, the truth getting loose is and always has been Trump’s biggest fear.

Now he’s in a near-unprecedented position where his lawyers are trying to intervene in a grand jury proceeding, fearing that certain people will talk. Fortunately, the attorney-client privilege is extremely limited in these circumstances, and the executive privilege may not exist at all in this context.

Oh, and unlike the jury process, the proceeding that Trump filed is public, and we will know the answers.

The secret court fight over privilege, which has not been previously reported & is under seal, is a turning point for Trump's post-presidency legal woes.

It included the appearance of 3 attorneys representing Trump at DC federal courthouse on Thursday.https://t.co/x4bcLKnHF4

— Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) September 23, 2022

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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman