The legal team of former US President Donald Trump, led by M. Evan Corcoran, arrives at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse. on September 20, 2022 in New York City.
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Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday appears to have lost an appeal of a bombshell ruling in the criminal investigation of classified records he stored at Florida residence Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, NBC News confirmed Wednesday.
The decision will likely force one of his lawyers to testify to a federal grand jury in the criminal probe. That appeal, which was handled with unusual speed, came after a judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that DOJ’s special counsel Jack Smith had presented enough evidence to establish that Trump committed a crime through his attorneys, NBC said, citing a source briefed on the proceedings.
Normally, attorneys cannot be compelled to testify against their clients due to attorney-client privilege, which protects their communications.
But Judge Beryl Howell, as first reported by ABC News, invoked the so-called crime fraud exception to that privilege when she ordered Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran on Friday to answer questions before the grand jury.
A docket entry in the sealed appeals court case believed to be Trump’s indicates that the appeals court rejected Trump’s bid, and ordered the parties to comply with Howell’s ruling.
Trump has been under investigation by the Justice Department since at least last year for removing hundreds of government documents, many of them classified, and keeping them at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach. By law, presidents must surrender such records when they leave office.
Smith, who was appointed to oversee the probe, also is investigating whether Trump and others obstructed justice by thwarting efforts by federal officials to recover those records in the months leading up to last August’s FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
NBC previously reported that last June, another Trump attorney, Christina Bobb, was told by Corcoran to…
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