Mar-a-Lago Prosecutors Claim Trump Lied to His Own Attorneys: Report
Former President Donald Trump allegedly lied to his own attorneys about the trove of documents he kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to a new report from ABC News. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled on Friday that prosecutors have presented a “prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations” that would allow for investigators to break the attorney-client privilege between Trump and his lawyer Evan Corcoran, per a sealed filing described by sources to ABC.
In response, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals placed a temporary stay on the order Tuesday night, and requested additional material from the government and Trump’s legal team be filed by early Wednesday morning.
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Corcoran, who has become a central subject of the Mar-a-Lago probe, was ordered on Friday to once again appear before the grand jury impaneled by Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate the probe. In her sealed ruling, Howell ordered Corcoran to comply with investigators’ request to question him regarding six different topics previously guarded by the attorney-client privilege. Sources told ABC that Corcoran was also compelled to turn over various records and documents to investigators.
Howell also ruled that there was “sufficient” evidence to suggest that the former president “intentionally concealed” the presence of additional troves of classified documents at his Palm Beach resort. Corcoran drafted a sworn statement, which was signed by fellow Trump attorney Christina Bobb on June 3 of last year, attesting to authorities that there were no more classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. A subsequent FBI raid of the property in August recovered more than 100 additional classified documents.
The Trump 2024 campaign responded with a statement accusing ABC News of “broadcasting ILLEGALLY LEAKED false allegations from a Never Trump, now former chief judge, against the Trump legal team.”
As previously reported by Rolling Stone, sources with knowledge of the matter report that Trump has been counseled to throw Corcoran under the bus, and let him take the fall for the whole mess. Trump was reportedly advised by his attorneys that the Department of Justice was “very likely” to charge his lawyer, and that he should distance himself from Corcoran as much as possible.
As Trump braces for a potential criminal indictment in relation to his 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the various other criminal probes against him continue to develop. The Daniels case was marked by the conviction of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to three years of prison time after taking the brunt of the case’s fallout. Hindsight is 20/20 and by the looks of it, Corcoran is apparently giving investigators enough to indicate that he isn’t going down without a fight.
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