Notes from Trump lawyer may be key in the investigation of classified documents
Turning on his iPhone one day last year, attorney M. Evan Corcoran recorded his reflections on a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump in an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
In complete sentences and in a narrative tone that sounded like it had been ripped out of a novel, Mr Corcoran detailed a nearly month-long period of the documentary investigation, according to two people familiar with the case.
Mr Corcoran’s account of his recollections involved his first meeting with Mr Trump last May to discuss a Justice Department subpoena to recover all classified materials in the former president’s possession, officials said. people.
It also included a search that Mr. Corcoran took action last June in response to the subpoena for all pertinent records held at Mar-a-Lago, the private club and residence of Mr. Trump in Florida. He conducted the search in preparation for a visit from prosecutors, who were on their way to enforce the subpoena and collect any sensitive material left there.
Government investigators almost never get a clear view of an attorney’s private relationships with their clients, let alone one as high profile as Mr. Trump. A recording like the voice memo Mr. Corcoran made last year — during a long car ride for a family event the morning after the May meeting, according to two people briefed on the recording — is usually shielded by attorney-client or work product privilege.
But in March, a federal judge ordered Mr. Corcoran’s recorded memoirs – now transcribed into dozens of pages – to be given to the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the documentary investigation.
Judge Beryl A. Howell’s decision broke the privilege that would normally have shielded Mr. Corcoran’s musings on his interactions with Mr. Trump. Those protections were set aside under the so-called crime fraud exception, a provision that allows prosecutors to circumvent attorney-client privilege if they have reason to believe that legal advice or services were used in furthering a crime .
Judge Howell made it clear in a sealed memorandum accompanying her decision that prosecutors believe Mr. Trump knowingly misled Mr. Corcoran about the location of documents that would respond to the subpoena, according to a person familiar with the contents of the memo.
Mr. Corcoran’s notes, which have not been described in such detail before, will likely play a central role as Mr. Smith and his team approach their investigation and focus on whether to press charges against Mr. Trump. They may also appear as evidence in a courtroom if a criminal case is eventually filed and brought to trial.
The level of detail in the recording is said to have angered and unnerved close aides to Mr Trump, who fear it doesn’t just include direct quotes from sensitive conversations.
Mr Corcoran, who was brought into Mr Trump’s orbit by a political and legal adviser to the former president, Boris Epshteyn, did not respond to a message asking for comment.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement that “the attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most fundamental principles in our legal system” and accused the Justice Department of trying to force Mr. basic right.”
Mr Cheung added that “Whether the lawyers’ notes are detailed or not, it makes no difference – these notes reflect the lawyer’s legal opinions and thoughts, not the client’s.” And he claimed that Mr. Trump had tried to cooperate when Justice Department officials came to the property in June last year.
In an early scene in his account, Mr. Corcoran describes meeting Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last spring to help him deal with a subpoena just issued by a federal grand jury in Washington seeking the restitution of all the classified material in his presidential office’s possession, said those familiar with the matter.
After courtesies, according to a description of the recorded notes, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Corcoran if he should comply with the subpoena. Mr. Corcoran told him he did.
That exchange could be helpful to prosecutors as they collect evidence on whether Mr. Trump was trying to obstruct the subpoena process and undermine the administration’s broader efforts to retrieve all of the sensitive data he took from the White House. to disturb.
But people close to Mr Trump have said the conversation could be cast in a more favorable light if a client merely asks their lawyer how to proceed.
The recording also details Mr. Corcoran searching a warehouse in Mar-a-Lago in an effort to comply with the subpoena’s document request, people familiar with the account said. Mr. Corcoran told a grand jury in May that several employees of the compound had told him that everything he needed was kept in the storage space in the basement of the property, according to people in the know.
Mr. Corcoran then provided Justice Department officials with more than three dozen documents found during his search, and drafted a letter to the Department stating that a careful search had found no more.
The notes in the recording don’t suggest that Mr. Corcoran was waved off to search anywhere but the storage room, people they knew said. But they also indicate that no one at Mar-a-Lago — including Mr. Trump — spoke up to tell him to look elsewhere.
In the end, it turned out that the employees who led Mr. Corcoran to the storage room were wrong. When FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago with a court-approved search warrant in August, they found classified documents not only in Mar-a-Lago’s basement, but also in Mr. Trump’s office.
The question of who moved boxes in and out of the storage area – and why – has become one of the central parts of Mr Smith’s investigation. Prosecutors have focused much of their attention on Walt Nauta, an aide to Mr. Trump who participated in moving boxes, and on another Mar-a-Lago employee, Carlos Deoliveira, a maintenance worker who helped Mr. Nauta.
Mr Smith’s team has also focused on a related question: whether there were any attempts to disrupt the government’s efforts to obtain Mar-a-Lago security camera footage that could shed light on how the documents in the storage facility were kept and who had access to them. Mr. Corcoran’s notes contain some details of Mr. Nauta’s involvement in the search.
For example, they say that Mr. Nauta locked the door of the storage room for Mr. Corcoran, according to experts. They also say that Mr. Nauta brought Mr. Corcoran some tape so that he could seal the classified documents he found in a folder, in preparation to give them to prosecutors.
Reference is also made to Mr. Corcoran’s meeting with prosecutors, which took place in Mar-a-Lago on June 3 last year. He and another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christina Bobb, met with Jay Bratt, the head of the counterintelligence division of the Justice Department’s national security division, to turn over the documents he found and the letter claiming that to the best of their acquaintance no longer remained in Mar-a-Lago.
The notes refer to Mr Trump’s actions in connection with Mr Bratt’s visit, according to a person who was aware of the contents of the notes.
Judge Howell’s memorandum in which Mr. Corcoran was forced to answer questions before a grand jury and produce his notes, the attorney described as essentially a victim of Mr. familiar with the contents of the memo.
As The New York Times reported in April, Judge Howell wrote in the memorandum, according to the person familiar with its contents, that Mr. what turned out to be more than a dozen boxes of records were a “dress rehearsal” for the May subpoena.