It’s been about two months since a lawyer for former President Donald Trump was forced to testify as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. It wasn’t clear at the time why a federal judge opted to approve a “crime fraud exception” to the usual shield of attorney-client privilege and ordered Evan Corcoran to testify. But now we have an inkling — and it’s not an encouraging development if the former president is still hoping to avoid a federal indictment.
This development seemingly makes for compelling evidence in a possible obstruction of justice case against Trump.
Among the roughly 50 pages of contemporaneous notes handed over to Smith in March was evidence that Corcoran had warned Trump he couldn’t hold on to any classified documents still in his possession, The Guardian reported on Monday, citing three people “with knowledge of” what the notes contained. (NBC News has not independently verified the reported contents of the notes.) When combined with previous reporting on Corcoran’s grand jury testimony, this development seemingly makes for compelling evidence in a possible obstruction of justice case against Trump.
The Guardian’s sources claim that Corcoran’s notes gave prosecutors a picture of the “unusually detailed knowledge” that Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, had about the scope and details of the search for documents that was taking place last summer. Last May, the Justice Department issued a subpoena requiring that Trump and his lawyers return any government records still at the property after finding over 100 classified documents in a set of boxes that had been provided to the National Archives and Records Agency earlier that year.
Nauta has reportedly told investigators that he had moved several boxes from a storage facility at Mar-a-Lago after the subpoena was issued. Several Trump employees had told Corcoran the facility was the only place where…
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