More evidence has emerged in recent days that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal presents a real threat to former President Trump.
Per multiple reports, Trump attorney Evan Corcoran has recused himself from the Mar-a-Lago investigation, after a federal judge compelled him to testify in Smith’s investigation. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell for the District of Columbia, then serving as chief judge for D.C., found that probable cause for a crime likely existed, allowing prosecutors to pierce the attorney-client privilege between Corcoran and Trump.
It set up a situation where Corcoran, who has also represented Trump in the Jan. 6 investigation, offered testimony potentially adverse to the interests his client.
That’s largely because of the reportedly key role that Corcoran played in the months leading up to the explosive August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
Prosecutors are investigating Trump’s decision to hold onto government records – some of them marked classified – after leaving office. But what has also figured into the probe is the time that Trump spent stalling on government efforts to have the records returned, which encompassed 19 months that saw the National Archives ask nicely, the FBI ask for the records, a grand jury subpoena culminating, finally, in the August 2022 search warrant.
Corcoran led the Trump legal team’s response to the DOJ subpoena in May 2022. The purported lack of a fulsome response to that subpoena led to the FBI raid. Corcoran drafted an attestation in June 2022 saying that a through search had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago for the records, the New York Times reported. But it was prosecutors’ belief that records remained at Mar-a-Lago which prompted the FBI raid.
Investigators have also reportedly expressed interest in a phone call that Corcoran held with Trump on June 24, 2022. The DOJ obtained a subpoena for video surveillance records at Mar-a-Lago that same day, which may have provided a basis for prosecutors to believe that Trump had not complied with the earlier subpoena.
Per CNN, prosecutors have asked asked witnesses about a different area of concern in recent weeks: whether attorneys that Trump pays for have attempted to protect the former President by influencing their clients’ testimony in the Mar-a-Lago case.
The network reported that prosecutors with Smith’s office have asked about payment arrangements. CNN quoted one person familiar as saying that prosecutors asked, “‘Did they tell you what to say? Did they get you to alter your testimony?’ Even if it were true, would anybody admit it?”
While Trump has not yet been charged and prosecutors have not laid out their theory of the case in any public hearings, the Mar-a-Lago case potentially contains the elements of obstruction of justice, legal observers have said, an allegation which has dogged Trump in various instances since the heady days of the Mueller investigation.
