To date, two indictments filed against former President Donald J. Trump – one brought by the Manhattan district attorney, the other by the Justice Department’s special counsel – charge him with the offences. very different but have one thing in common: Both are based, at least in part, in the words of their own attorneys.
In a 49-page federal indictment accusing him of withholding classified documents after leaving the White House and conspiring to thwart government efforts to get them back, some evidence has the potential to be damaging. most come from notes made by one of those attorneysM. Evan Corcoran.
Mr. Corcoran’s notes, first recorded on an iPhone and then transcribed on paper, essentially provided prosecutors with a road map for building their case. Mr. Trump, according to the indictment, pressured Corcoran to prevent investigators from retrieving a series of classified documents and even suggested to him that it would be better to lie to investigators and keep him safe. entire document.
Earlier this year, in the face of Trump’s objections, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, Jack Smith, got the notes through calling the criminal fraud exception. That exception is a provision of the law that allows prosecutors to address the usual defenses of attorney-client privilege if they have reason to believe and can demonstrate to the judge that the client used legal advice to continue the crime.
The decision in favor of the Justice Department’s request by Judge Beryl A. Howell, then chief justice of the Federal District Court in Washington, was decisive for the form and outcome of the investigation.
Mr. Trump’s legal fate may now depend on testimony and evidence from two people he has paid to defend him: Mr. Corcoran, who remains a member of his legal team, and Michael D. Cohen, a former attorney for Mr. Trump who helped New York prosecutors in a case involving the former president’s hush payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges, including one related to campaign finance violations, in 2018. Mr. Corcoran was not charged with any wrongdoing.
Their complicated involvement in the two cases reflects the danger from the former president’s longstanding habit of treating lawyers as attack dogs or even political bosses rather than constrained supporters. bound by moral rules.
Now in his late ’70s, Mr. Trump is still looking for lawyers who modeled after the man who mentored, protected and, in his own words, snubbed him: the ruthless Roy M. Cohn. and was ultimately disqualified from enforcing the law.
Mr. Trump will appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
When Trump’s indictment was opened on Friday, it suddenly became clear that Mr Corcoran’s notes – identified as “Trump Attorney 1” – were far broader in scope and far more damaging than was previously known. .
“What if we don’t respond at all or don’t play with them?” Corcoran quoted Trump as saying at one point, alluding to government officials seeking to enforce subpoenas demanding the return of the documents.
The notes mentioned in the indictment underscore the extent to which the allegations built on evidence from his inner circle. Along with Mr Corcoran’s notes, prosecutors collected text messages from some of his employees and an audio recording of him made by an aide. Prosecutors seized phones and subpoenaed documents from a broad group of his advisers.
For years, the accounts of those close to Trump have shaped investigators’ understanding of various investigations.
In the New York case, which focused on hush payments to porn stars, the charges were based in part on Cohen’s testimony. Mr. Cohen paid the woman Stormy Daniels and was reimbursed by Mr. Trump over time, records and testimony show. Now he’s the prosecution’s star witness.
But as Mr Corcoran’s testimony and notes became key elements in the lawsuit over the documents, Mr Trump made it clear that he still considers his lawyers to be somehow immune from legal scrutiny. .
“I’ve always thought that lawyers really have a very high status in life, that when you have a lawyer, lawyers can’t be subpoenaed, they can’t be summoned to speak,” Trump said. Newsmax in March after Judge Howell’s ruling. Complaining about Mr Corcoran being forced to testify in the document investigation, he said: “They brought in lawyers as if, you know, they were witnesses to a case. It shouldn’t have been like that.”
Mr Corcoran, who was nominated to the group by Mr Trump’s legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn, is likely to become a key witness if the case goes to trial.
The special counsel’s continued investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has included testimony from key advisers to the former president, as well as an investigation into the matter. of the House Selection Committee on this matter.
Mr. Trump has long complained about lawyers or other advisers taking notes in front of him. But the New York Times reported that Mr Corcoran’s notes were plentiful, being included in the Voice Memos app on his iPhone following a meeting with Mr Trump over the subpoena issued in May. 2022 demanded the return of any classified documents he still had in March. -a-Lago.
In the legal memo explaining his ruling that Mr Corcoran needed to provide testimony during the investigation of the documents, Judge Howell wrote that prosecutors had presented convincing evidence that Mr Corcoran had been abused by a client. deceitful customer, who gave the lawyer a “glare” look at where the remaining boxes of documents were kept.
“The government has fully demonstrated all three elements” of one of the obstruction statutes “by providing evidence that the former president intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents bearing distributive signs.” type from Corcoran, knowing that deception would result in Corcoran unknowingly providing false information to the government,” the judge wrote in the 86-page memo, according to a person briefed on the content. its.
At one point, according to the notes, Mr. Trump expressed concern about Mr. Corcoran sorting out documents in boxes he had taken from the White House, even though he had specifically sent Mr. Corcoran to handle the documents. the Justice Department’s effort to recover all documents that Mr. Trump may still have.
“I don’t want anyone looking at my box, I really don’t,” the notes quoted Mr. Trump as saying. “I don’t want you to look through my box.”
In one of the most damning passages of the notes, Mr Corcoran described how Mr Trump made a “spit motion” after he placed about 40 secret documents in a file in preparation for handing them over. Federal prosecutors under subpoena have asked for the return of all classified documents in the possession of Mr. Trump.
In his note, Mr Corcoran said the gesture made him think Mr Trump was suggesting that he take the brochure back to “his hotel room and if there’s something really bad in it, say, for example” like, you know, take it out.”
In another revealing exchange of what Mr. Trump hopes to communicate with his attorney about what the former president expects of him, Mr. Trump spoke admiringly of an unnamed Hillary lawyer. Clinton, former secretary of state. Mr. Trump said the lawyer had taken responsibility for deleting the emails from her private server, an issue that prompted an FBI investigation into her handling of government documents.
“He was great, he did a great job,” Trump said, as Corcoran recounted in the indictment. “He said it was – that it was him. That he’s the one who deleted all her emails, 30,000 emails, because they basically handle her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having beauty appointments . And he’s great. As for him, she shouldn’t have any trouble because he said he was the one who deleted them.”
In addition to serving as potential jury evidence, Mr. Corcoran’s notes could be useful to prosecutors in what will certainly be a contentious pre-trial period marked by the petitions from Mr. Trump’s lawyers to dismiss the case for a variety of reasons.
One of those dismissal efforts could be the so-called selective prosecution motion, which argues that Mr. Trump was unjustly accused when a figure like Clinton, for example, was also investigated for his handling of the crime. classified information but never faced indictment.
Mr. Corcoran’s detailed accounts of how Mr. Trump sought to avoid handing over any classified documents could be powerful evidence of his obstruction of the government’s investigation and, for that reason, used to distinguish his case from that of Clinton.
