NEW YORK — A top lawyer for former President Donald Trump was set Friday to testify about the classified documents he stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in a major legal breakthrough for prosecutors.
Attorney Evan Corcoran was expected to be forced to reveal what Trump told him about the scores of sensitive government documents he kept in defiance of a subpoena.
Corcoran was ordered to answer questions from prosecutors without invoking attorney-client privilege after federal appeals court judges ruled that Trump likely sought to use the lawyer to lie about the documents.
Prosecutors believe Trump lied to Corcoran to get him to sign off on a letter to prosecutors that asserted lawyers had mounted a “diligent search” and found no documents covered by the subpoena.
That letter proved to be a brazen lie, leaving Corcoran exposed to significant legal peril if he didn’t have good reason for making the claims.
If Corcoran now says Trump falsely told him that all the documents had been returned, legal experts say it would be a smoking gun proving that the former president obstructed justice in the documents case.
The grand jury operates in secret so it’s unlikely any information about Corcoran’s appearance will immediately be divulged publicly.
Special counsel Jack Smith, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor, is investigating Trump’s role in the documents scandal as well as his effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The investigations are unrelated to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into hush money Trump paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
There is no known time frame for any of the investigations. But analysts believe the push to obtain Corcoran’s full testimony is a powerful signal that the documents probe is in the final stages.
Trump improperly took hundreds of classified documents with him when he left the White House in 2021 after being forced to accept that he lost to Biden.
He returned some of the documents when asked by officials. He returned another batch after the feds got a judge to issue a subpoena.
But Trump defied the subpoena’s demands to return all remaining classified documents. He left some of the documents, including at least one that described an unnamed foreign nation’s nuclear weapons capacity, in a basement storage room.
A top federal judge ruled last week that the so-called crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege applies to Corcoran’s discussions about the issue with Trump.
A three-judge panel quickly rejected Trump’s appeal of the order, setting the stage for Corcoran’s appearance. He also was ordered to hand over notes and documents related to his talks with Trump.
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