Trump’s urgent request to keep his attorney’s records private is denied by the court
On Wednesday, a federal appeals court issued a sealed order directing a lawyer for former President Donald Trump to hand over documents to prosecutors investigating the ex-president’s retention of classified records at his Florida estate. The decision is a significant victory for the Justice Department, which has been focusing on the hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and why Trump and his representatives refused to return them to the government. The ruling implies that the court has sided with prosecutors who have argued behind closed doors that Trump was using his legal representation to further a crime.
The order was announced in a brief online notice by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is confidential, and none of the parties involved is mentioned by name. However, the details appear to match a secret legal battle before a lower court judge over whether Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran could be compelled to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the Justice Department special counsel probe into whether Trump mishandled top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago.
Corcoran is considered relevant to the investigation because he drafted a statement to the Justice Department last year claiming that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago in response to a subpoena. That claim was proven false when FBI agents searched the property with a warrant weeks later and discovered roughly 100 additional documents with classified markings. Another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, told investigators last fall that Corcoran had drafted the letter and asked her to sign it in her capacity as a designated custodian of Trump’s records.
A Justice Department investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors is looking into whether Trump or anyone in his circle obstructed its efforts to recover all the classified documents, including top-secret material, from his home. No charges have been filed yet. Trump faces multiple legal threats, including inquiries in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to overturn the election result, and a grand jury investigation in New York over hush money payments. The New York case seems to be approaching completion and building towards an indictment.
Last week, the outgoing chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Beryl Howell, ordered Corcoran to answer more questions before the grand jury. He had previously appeared before the federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago case but had invoked attorney-client privilege to avoid answering certain questions.
While attorney-client privilege protects lawyers from being forced to reveal details of their conversations with clients before prosecutors, the Justice Department can circumvent this if it can convince a judge that a lawyer’s services were used in furtherance of a crime — a principle known as the “crime-fraud” exception.
According to an anonymous source familiar with the matter, Howell ruled in favor of the Justice Department shortly before stepping down as chief judge on Friday. The ruling was then appealed, and the dispute before the federal appeals panel concerns an order that Howell issued last Friday.
The three-judge panel that made the decision includes Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, both appointees of President Joe Biden. The order was issued just hours after the court imposed strict deadlines on both sides to file written briefs presenting their arguments.
A lawyer for Corcoran did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, and a lawyer for Trump declined to comment on the sealed order.
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