The top lawyer for former President Donald Trump was told by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Wednesday that he had to testify on the special counsel’s inquiry into whether Trump mishandled classified documents.
The attorneys for Trump lost their appeal of a move that told Evan Corcoran to “comply with the district court’s order to produce documents from March 17, 2023.”
Friday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said that the office of special counsel Jack Smith had presented a “prima facie showing” that the former president had broken the law, which meant that attorney-client privilege may be broken.
Corcoran will now have to talk about six things for which he had claimed attorney-client privilege before.
A source on the inside told ABC News about the six people.
Here are the six things the special counsel wants Corcoran to talk about in her testimony.
1. Trump’s answer to a subpoena from May 11
Sources say that the special counsel wants to know if Trump or anybody who works for him knew about the signed certification that was sent to the Department of Justice. The certification was written by Corcoran and signed by Trump attorney Christina Bobb. It was in response to a subpoena from May 11 that asked Trump for any secret materials he still had. The answer turned out to be untrue, which led to the August FBI raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
2. Focusing on the answer to the subpoena
As a follow-up to the first question, the second line of inquiry asks if Trump knew that the response said his staff had done a “diligent search” of Mar-a-Lago.
3. Information on Corcoran’s hunt
Investigators want Corcoran to tell them step-by-step what he did to make sure there were no more secret papers at Mar-a-Lago.
4. The storage room at Mar-a-Lago
They also want to know why Corcoran told investigators in June that he thought all the documents were in the storage room of the estate.
Who helped choose Bobb as the person in charge of the documents?
The special counsel wants to know who chose Bobb to be the person in charge of the papers that Trump took with him when he left office. They also want to know if Trump talked to Bobb about her being chosen as guardian in any way.
6. June 24 phone call
Investigators want to know what Corcoran and Trump spoke about on the phone on June 24. On the same day, a second grand jury subpoena was sent to Trump. It asked for surveillance video that showed boxes of papers going in and out of storage at Mar-a-Lago. During their June visit, the former president’s staff didn’t let the authorities listen to the tapes. Prosecutors said that the chat constituted “a different stage” of Trump’s “ongoing scheme.”
Trump’s staff has strongly rejected that the special counsel’s case against Trump has a solid foundation and has accused the special counsel of exploiting the judicial system against Trump.
A Trump spokesman told ABC News, “There is no factual or legal basis for any case against the president.” “The crazy Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and turning the justice system into a weapon to change public opinion because they are losing the political battle.” The true story here is that prosecutors only go after attorneys when they have no case at all.”