Legally, no. You cannot use an NDA to force someone to help you cover your a crime. That’s illegal.
What it might do is get people to come forward, because the threat of the NDA was perceived as real.
Most noncompete agreements are also illegal and unenforceable but if people follow them without seeking advice, they’re doing what the employer intended them to do.
When I had to sign a non-compete as a requirement to accept a job I thought I wanted, my lawyer’s advice was to just sign it because it was completely unenforceable. He said to basically sign it and forget about it.
I’ve never understood how a Trump NDA as something agreed to by members of the US government would have any teeth whatsoever. Any NDA I signed as an employee of the government was between me and the government. I couldn’t imagine my manager making me sign one with him personally.
You cannot use an NDA to force someone to help you cover your a crime. That’s illegal.
So there’s a 0% chance that Trump would ever do something like that.
The thing is that the people who make you sign the agreement want you to think it’s enforceable. It simply isn’t.
There was a case where the big Silicon Valley companies entered into a mutual agreement to not only have their employees sign non-competes, but colluded to not hire each other’s employees. They were sued and lost, and everyone working for them at the time got a check.
I’ve signed the NDAs that will get you an orange jumpsuit if you break them. Those are the ones written by places like the DoD. Some Trump lawyer saying you must cover up a crime because of a personal NDA you signed with him as President would have absolutely zero effect on my testifying, because it has no legal basis for enforcement.
I think this is where discovery comes in but I’m not a lawyer so I’m shaky on the process. My understanding is that the two parties have to give over certain information to each other like who the witnesses are and evidence that will be used in the trial. So even if they did have an NDA there is still the possibility of the prosecutors being able to question them in a trial, if they were handed over during discovery as witnesses. If there’s a lawyer or someone more knowledgeable about trial law lurking around that can correct me if I’m wrong please do!
