Donald Trump’s lawyer told the former president he could not hold onto classified materials after he was ordered to hand them over, and federal prosecutors have proof.
Attorney Evan Corcoran found about 40 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago last June but told the Justice Department that no further materials were at the private residence, which later was shown to be false after the FBI returned in August with a warrant and seized 101 classified documents, reported The Guardian.
Corcoran preserved that warning in his contemporaneous notes, which prosecutors showed to a grand jury after an appeals court allowed attorney-client privilege to be pierced because they found Trump might have used his attorney’s advice to commit a crime.
Prosecutors have zeroed in on Trump valet Walt Nauta, who told investigators the former president told him to move boxes from the storage room before and after the subpoena was issued for the documents’ return, and surveillance video shows him doing just that, although there are some gaps in the footage.
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The notes show that Corcoran told the valet about the subpoena before he started looking for the classified documents because the attorney needed him to unlock the storage room, and they also show that Nauta offered to help him look through the boxes.
Corcoran declined and told the valet to remain outside the storage room, but his search lasted several days — much longer than expected.
The notes also suggest the storage room might have been left unattended for some periods while the search was conducted while Corcoran took breaks to walk to the nearby pool area.
Corcoran described Trump’s facial expressions and other reactions when they discussed the subpoena, and Trump reportedly was irritated by the high level of detail in his attorney’s notes, which he only learned about after they were subpoenaed by prosecutors.
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