Being subpoenaed by the committee wasn’t the worst of Trump’s day
A ruling on the use of executive privilege in the prosecution of a former president’s campaign to challenge the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago
Former President Donald Trump got another boost in his bid to challenge the FBI search of his Florida home, with US District Judge Aileen Cannon reshaping the plan put forward by the special master she appointed to review the materials seized at Mar-a-Lago last month.
Cannon, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate after the election, has shown that Dearie is much less sympathetic to Trump’s claims.
The larger Justice Department investigation into how documents were handled is looking at whether crimes were committed in how documents were mishandled in the Trump White House.
With the intervention of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month, the department was allowed to resume the criminal probe’s use of the documents marked as classified, which may well be the heart of the investigation.
Thousands of government documents were recovered when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago two months later.
Cannon rejected the part of the plan that would have forced the legal team of the former President to back up their claims that the FBI planted evidence.
Cannon has ordered the appointment of a special master that will look into the accuracy of the inventory, the descriptions and the contents of the seized materials.
Cannon said that the Trump legal team does not have to give details about the executive privilege claims in the review.
The federal judge removed the special master’s proposed requirement that Trump, when asserting a document is covered by executive privilege, specify whether he believed that barred disclosure within the executive branch versus disclosure outside of it.
The finding, which was part of a major ruling Friday from Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court and was first reported by ABC News, makes clear for the first time that the Justice Department is arguing it has evidence that Trump may have committed a crime. And Howell ruled that prosecutors met the burden to overcome Trump’s right to shield discussions with his lawyers normally protected under attorney-client privilege.
Understanding the Pro-Trump Mob: The Case for the Ex-President of the 2020 Insurrection, When the Boundaries Dragged on the Capitol
In explaining the “modest enlargement” of the timeline, Cannon pointed to the issues the parties had faced in securing a vendor to digitize the seized materials for the review.
The Government mentioned in conversations with the counsel that there were more than 200,000 pages in the 11,000 documents. That estimated volume, with a need to operate under the accelerated timeframes supported by the Government, is the reason why so many of the Government’s selected vendors have declined the potential engagement,” Trump’s team wrote on Wednesday.
Trump lawyer Christina Bobb had to hire her own lawyer after signing an attestation in June which declared that Trump’s team had conducted a “diligent search” to comply with the Justice Department’s subpoena and returned all documents with classified markings. Bobb told investigators that Evan Corcoran, another Trump lawyer, had drafted the attestation for her to sign. Bobb was forced to sign an attestation at Mar-a-Lago, but she insisted first that her knowledge was based on the information provided to her.
The sworn statement Bobb submitted to the DOJ included a caveat that she was making the certification based on the information that has been provided to her.
The January 6 committee voted to subpoena him after it came to light that he had planned to overthrow the 2020 election and that he had failed to fulfill his duty as his mob invaded the US Capitol.
The hearing featured never-before-seen footage of congressional leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, huddled in a secure location during the insurrection grappling with the implications of the pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol. It also featured almost pitiful accounts of the ex-President’s desperate attempts to avoid publicly admitting he was a loser in 2020 and made a case that his full comprehension of his defeat made his subsequent actions even more heinous.
Off stage, the developments that could hurt Trump are what happened. The legal thicket surrounding the ex- President, who has not been charged with a crime, and the distance still left to run for efforts to account for his chaotic exit from power, reflect the challenges of trying to balance a presidency that constantly tested the rule of law.
As the election nears, Trump and his allies are looking for some relief from his legal troubles.
In the middle of the House select committee hearing, the Supreme Court gave word that they had no interest in being sucked into Trump’s efforts to derail the Justice Department probe.
On Tuesday, Trump’s team requested emergency intervention from the appeals court. Three judges from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals have moved fast to respond, as they are still considering whether to put the decision from Howell on hold.
The ex-president has a clear path to criminal exposure if he is caught red-handed leaking classified documents, and his confrontation with the CIA over them on January 6 is perhaps the most obvious example of this.
While television stations beamed blanket coverage of the committee hearing, more news broke that hinted at further grave legal problems the ex-President could face from another Justice Department investigation – also into January 6. Unlike the House’s version, the DOJ’s criminal probe has the power to draw up indictments.
According to The New York Times, a Manhattan district attorney is presenting evidence to the grand jury looking into the role that Trump may have played in paying porn star Stormy Daniels. Last week, a district attorney in Georgia said decisions are imminent on charges related to Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. The ex-president may or may not have been targeted by the investigation. Smith is also looking into Trump’s involvement in the US Capitol insurrection.
CNN’s Brown had reported late on Wednesday that a Trump employee had told the FBI about being directed by the ex-President to move boxes out of a basement storage room at his Florida club after Trump’s legal team received a subpoena for any classified documents. The FBI also has surveillance footage showing a staffer moving the boxes.
Still, David Schoen, who was Trump’s defense lawyer in his second impeachment, told CNN’s “New Day” that though the details of what happened at Mar-a-Lago raised troubling questions, they did not necessarily amount to a case of obstructing justice.
Trump’s compliance with the grand jury subpoena potentially poses a distinct legal risk amid legal wrangling over whether the former President mishandled classified documents he retained after leaving the White House. In earlier court filings, prosecutors claimed that Trump’s team had not fully complied with a subpoena served in May and “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
On Thursday morning, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court to block the Trump Organization from moving assets and continuing to perpetrate what she has alleged in a civil lawsuit is a decades-long fraud.
James wants a preliminary injunction to stop the Trumps from engaging in fraudulent conduct until her $250 million suit against them is decided.
Trump has not been charged in the documents case, but is still under investigation by the grand jury in Washington. The prosecutors used video evidence in their case, one source said.
Matters may be complicated by the situation in Georgia, where Trump is attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Willis has said she’s aiming for a special grand jury to wrap up its investigative work by the end of the year.
What Happened When the Unselect Committee voted on January 6 to Subpoena the Ex-President Donald J. Budowich
On one of those days when the seriousness of the crisis can be seen by the vehemence in the rhetoric he uses, Trump came out fighting on Thursday.
First Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich mocked the unanimous 9-0 vote in the select committee to subpoena the former President for documents and testimony.
“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Trump-endorsed candidates will sweep the Midterms, and America First leadership & solutions will be restored,” Budowich wrote on Twitter.
The former President made a post on his Truth Social network that did not respond to the accusations against him in order to stir a political reaction from his supporters.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? They decided to wait until the last moment of their meeting. The Committee is a bad thing. Trump wrote.
Given the ex-President’s history of obstructing efforts to examine his tumultuous presidency, it would be a surprise if he does not fight the subpoena, although there might be part of him that would relish a primetime spot in a live hearing.
pro-Trump Republicans who claim it is a politicized attempt to impugn Trump that doesn’t allow cross-examination of witnesses might be helped by the subpoena. If it wished to enforce a subpoena, the committee would have to seek a contempt of Congress referral to the Justice Department from the full House. It took a step like this with Trump’s political advisor Steve Bannon. He was sentenced to two months in prison for contempt of Congress.
The evidence would likely be significant in the obstruction probe being pursued by special counsel Jack Smith’s team. It also underscores how critical the testimony of Trump’s defense lawyers would be in the federal grand jury investigation.
Given the slim chance of Trump complying with a congressional subpoena then, many observers will see the dramatic vote to target the ex-President as yet another theatrical flourish in a set of slickly produced hearings that often resembled a television courtroom drama.
Liz Cheney said the investigation was not only about what happened on January 6, but about the future as well.
The Wyoming lawmaker, who lost to a Trump-backed challenger in the August election, said that as a result of the conduct of the former President, we chip away at the foundation of our Republic.
The DOJ subpoenaed Trump for documents with classification markings and the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals: A complete con job for a President’s home
After the DOJ subpoenaed Trump for documents with classified markings in his possession in May, prosecutors went to court to enforce the grand jury subpoena. The judge ordered the team to comply. That prompted the search by Trump lawyers that yielded the two additional documents with classification markings.
The Justice Department asked for the court to stay out of the dispute while legal challenges play out.
The DOJ, in its filing, argued that the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that Cannon “abused her discretion” and inflicted “a serious and unwarranted intrusion on the Executive Branch’s authority to control the use and distribution of extraordinarily sensitive government records.”
The Justice Department requested that judges on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals halt certain orders while the legal dispute plays out.
The Eleventh Circuit lacked the power to stay the order of the District Court and the Special Master was not given the power to review the seized materials.
Raymond Dearie, the senior US judge appointed as special master, will be “substantially impaired” by the appeals court order and that it will slow “ongoing time-sensitive work,” Trump’s team added.
“Any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a President’s home erodes public confidence in our system,” the filing said.
US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, “fundamentally erred” in appointing a special master in the first place and noted the Justice Department is appealing that decision in the lower courts.
“This ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman’ case is a complete con job,” Mr. Trump said in his statement. He said Ms. Carroll wasn’t his type and he didn’t know her.
The order imposed by the court will allow depositions to be kept confidential. It is not known if Mr. Trump wants his deposition to be confidential.
In September 2020, the Justice Department used a law meant to protect federal employees from litigation to intervene on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
Judge Kaplan said that his comments had no relation to the official business of the US and that an alleged sexual assault had taken place many decades before he took office.
When do the documents in Trump World come back? The case for re-opening of the Mar-a-Lago dispute by Corcoran and Kise
The possibility of federal officials returning to the property is one option the Trump team is considering to protect the former president from legal jeopardy. Sources familiar with the situation say that no firm decisions have been made because Trump’s legal team is still weighing how to handle the Justice Department.
In June, a statement was drafted by Corcoran stating that there were no more classified documents at Trump’s Florida residence.
The approach comes as Trump’s team is making an argument in court that his presidential records are not his personal property and were first heard by conservative judicial activist Tom Fitton.
A person close to Trump said that the general belief in Trump World is that this is a meaningless event and the sooner we get past it, the better.
At least some of the battle to secure their return has been playing out behind the scenes in a court proceeding that is under seal, according to people familiar with the situation. There is a chance of the Justice Department getting a judge to order the Trump team to work with the DOJ on another search.
Sources close to Trump say that the former President is now interested in the cooperative approach advocated by some of his more experienced lawyers, including the former Florida solicitor general, Chris Kise. Kise had faced headwinds from Trump and some of his more aggressive advisers.
Federal prosecutors have taken a more aggressive stance in the Trump inquiry since last summer, when the Justice Department disclosed it had evidence that records Trump kept in Florida had been concealed or removed, raising the need for an obstruction investigation.
Among the complicating factors has been Trump’s personal views on the document dispute. He initially claimed that his team had been fully cooperative with investigators and insisted on social media “ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK,” for documents to be returned. In court papers and on social media, Trump has claimed that the Mar-a-Lago documents are his. I want my documents back. The former President said that in October.
Attorneys for the Investigating Investigations of a 2020 Election: Corcoran vs Epshteyn’s Case
According to sources familiar with his situation, Corcoran has insisted to his colleagues that he doesn’t face a legal risk and has not hired a lawyer.
A third Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, had his cellphone seized by the FBI last month and has testified in front of a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Indicting someone for running for the White House would cause uproar. And while no decision has been made about whether a special counsel might be needed in the future, DOJ officials have debated whether doing so could insulate the Justice Department from accusations that Joe Biden’s administration is targeting his chief political rival, people familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Justice Department is preparing for the possibility that it will indict a president after the election, so it is sending experienced prosecutors to its investigations.
“They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged.
Political attacks on special counsels are not new. Both former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under withering criticism from their opponents.
The old guard of the Southern District of New York prosecutors have been brought in to help with the investigations, as well as David Rody, a former prosecutor who used to work in gang cases.
Rody left Sidley Austin in recent weeks to become a senior counsel in the criminal division at the Department of Justice, according to his Linkedin profile and sources familiar with the move.
The Mueller Investigation of Right-Wing Extremists: Steps Toward a Resolution of the Bose-Einstein Condensate
The January 6 investigations are growing, even as the sedition cases against right-wing extremists are going to trial.
There are a number of prosecutors who joined the January 6 team, including a high ranked fraud and public corruption prosecutor, and a prosecutor with years of experience in criminal appellate work currently involved in some grand jury activity.
The decision of whether to charge Trump and his associates will be made by Attorney General Garland, who was appointed by President Joe Biden because of his experience as a judge, which distanced him from partisan politics.
Several former prosecutors think there are facts in the case. Garland will have to navigate a politically perilous and historic decision of how to approach the indictment of a former President.
Garland was reticent to answer the question about a special counsel for Trump-related investigations but said that the Justice Department wouldn’t hesitate to handle cases that are controversial or political.
Any partisan element of decision making about cases will be avoided. “That is what I’m intent on ensuring that the Department decisions are made on the merits, and that they’re made on the facts and the law, and they’re not based on any kind of partisan considerations.”
Garland’s tough decisions go beyond Trump. The long-running investigation of Hunter Biden, son of the president, is nearing conclusion, people briefed on the matter say. Also waiting in the wings: a final decision on the investigation of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, after prosecutors recommended against charges.
“They’re not going to charge before they’re ready to charge,” one former Justice Department official with some insight into the thinking around the investigations said. The review of cases will be more difficult, but there will be more pressure to get through it.
A quiet period around the election has been observed by this woman, who is trying to get witnesses before the grand jury in the coming weeks. Sources previously told CNN indictments could come as soon as December.
Key Trump allies, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows are among witnesses that have tried to fight off subpoenas in the state probe into efforts to interfere with the Georgia 2020 election.
The House Select Committee investigation added to DOJ’s investigative leads from inside the Trump White House because of how the disputes in Georgia will be resolved.
The DOJ tried to keep it quiet during the weeks leading up to the election but Trump was able to get them to do so.
The Justice Department may decide if there will be criminal charges based on what happens in the intelligence review of those documents, according to one source.
On Tuesday a federal judge ordered Trump adviser Kash Patel to testify before a grand jury investigating the handling of federal records at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court granted Patel immunity from prosecution on any information he provides to the investigation— another significant step that moves the Justice Department closer to potentially charging the case.
Reply to the Sensitivity of the Select Committee to the 2021 January 6, 2021, Attack and Implications for the Mueller’s Investigation
The final report the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack is set to release Wednesday launches a new era for criminal investigators, politicians and members of the public who have been eager to see the nuts and bolts of its work.
The committee is expected to release a lot of transcripts, but there are some witnesses that the committee has not agreed to protect, according to Bennie Thompson.
The summary released Monday also claimed the panel has a “range of evidence suggesting specific efforts to obstruct the Committee’s investigation.” That includes concerns that attorneys paid by Trump’s political committee or allied groups “have specific incentives to defend President Trump rather than zealously represent their own clients.”
In its summary, the panel said it is aware of multiple efforts by President Trump to contact select committee witnesses, and that DOJ is aware of at least one of those circumstances.
“Certain witnesses and lawyers were unnecessarily combative, answered hundreds of questions with variants of ‘I do not recall’ in circumstances where that answer seemed unbelievable, appeared to testify from lawyer-written talking points rather than their own recollections, provided highly questionable rationalizations or otherwise resisted telling the truth,” the panel added.
“The public can ultimately make its own assessment of these issues when it reviews the Committee transcripts and can compare the accounts of different witnesses and the conduct of counsel,” the summary previewed.
The committee wrote that it had concerns about the credibility of his testimony, and would make it public. Ornato didn’t remember giving the information to Hutchinson or the White House employee, according to the report. “The Committee is skeptical of Ornato’s account.”
Investigating and defending Trump after the 2019 2020 Presidential Election: A summary of fundraising efforts by the GOP and select committee on the US Capitol breach
In terms of financing after the 2020 presidential election and through the January 6 rallies, the committee says it gathered evidence indicating that Trump “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th.”
“For example, the Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop Democrats from ‘trying to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office,’” the summary states.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, has said the panel has evidence that members of the Trump family and inner circle – including Kimberly Guilfoyle – personally benefited from money that was raised based on the former president’s false election claims, but the panel has never gone as far to say a financial crime has been committed.
A source tells CNN that Jack Smith sent a letter to the select committee on December 5 requesting information from their investigation.
DOJ initially asked for all of the transcripts but committee members, including Thompson, believed the depositions were theirs to keep.
According to CNN, a source familiar with Trump’s January 6 legal team said that they would look at the committee transcripts that would be released in the next few days to find out whether the panel omitted presenting information publicly because it was conflicting with itself.
The ex president’s aides and advisers hope the transcripts of the panel will provide new information about the DOJ criminal investigation into January 6.
The security failures that led to the US Capitol breach were the focus of Republicans who have been trying to undermine the select committee’s work since its inception. Five House Republicans were subpoenaed by the committee, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and did not cooperate with the investigation. The four returning members of Congress were referred to the House Ethics Committee by the panel.
McCarthy has called on the select committee to keep all of its records and transcripts after he vowed to hold hearings next year on the Capitol security failures that led to the breach.
Investigating the Investigation of Donald Trump and the Mar-a-Lago Investigation: Tim Parlatore, a former president, and the D.C. District Court
“The referral itself is pretty much worthless,” Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore said on “CNN Newsroom.” The department of justice does not have to follow it. There’s been an existing investigation that we have been dealing with for quite some time. Really what this does, If anything, it just politicizes the process.”
The bipartisan committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol had sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The committee members believed Trump to be guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of a congressional session, and some other federal crimes.
“It’s political noise, but it doesn’t have any effect, as of right now, on our defense,” said Parlatore, who represents Trump in the Justice Department probes into January 6 and the potential mishandling of government documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Parlatore said to CNN on Saturday he was certain there weren’t any more records with classification markings left at Mar-a-Lago.
A source tells CNN that a federal judge ordered the former President’s attorneys to turn over the names of people they hired to search four properties for documents.
Last month, federal judge Beryl Howell, the chief of the DC District Court, declined to hold Trump in contempt of court and urged the Justice Department and Trump’s team to work out a resolution as investigators attempt to make sure all national security records are back in the possession of the federal government. According to sources, the judge questioned prosecutors on how they could hold Trump’s team in contempt because of the steps Trump lawyers had taken to clear the way for records to still be in his possession.
Taken together, the investigative moves underscore that there is continued grand jury activity in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, at a time when the Justice Department has newer inquiries into unsecured national security records underway involving President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Two people who found two classified documents for Donald Trump at a storage facility in Florida have testified before a grand jury in Washington that is looking into the former president and his handling of national security records.
The two individuals who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week.
After the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, they were hired to look for evidence in other areas, including Trump Tower in New York, Bedminster, and an office location in Florida. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources said.
The development comes at a time when prosecutors are looking at files in a laptop belonging to a member of Trump’s staff. At times, the special counsel’s office has been unwilling to negotiate with defense attorneys over recent subpoenas, leading to tense conversations.
By pushing for access to computers, investigators are trying to determine if there is an electronic paper trail regarding the classified documents, another source said.
The Biden and Pence situations have been markedly different. Both Biden’s and Pence’s teams handed them back to the intelligence officials because they highlighted sloppiness in tracking classified papers.
Investigating the Mar-a-Lago Insurrection against an Ex-President: New Insights from Special Counsel Jack Smith
Special counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors who now work for him have used the federal grand jury nearly weekly to question witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
The man who tried to steal an election and was accused of fomenting an insurrection, started his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday.
“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. This is the first time there have been justice systems like this. The ex-president said on the trail over the weekend that it was all investigation.
Some of Trump’s base voters feel like they are being ignored by the federal government and have bought into his false claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It is a technique that is familiar to demagogues because they use it to justify taking the heat, so their followers don’t have to.
According to a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, the latest developments in the case could indicate that Smith was leaning towards indictments.
“It sounds like he is trying to lock in their testimony, to understand how they would testify at trial, whether it is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.”
The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The Attorney General is going to have to make a lot of decisions if evidence shows that Trump should be charged.
The investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents is taking place inside a legal bubble, as shown by the report about the grand jury.
Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.
Two special counsel investigations into the retention of secret documents by Biden and Trump are not tied together. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.
Were Trump, for instance, to be prosecuted – over what so far appears to be a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction – and Biden is not, the ex-president would incite a firestorm of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president gets protections from prosecution, it’s difficult to see how the political ground for prosecuting Biden and Trump could hold up, especially if they decide to run for president.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/trump-documents-grand-jury-2024-campaign/index.html
CNN Learns the Judges of the DC Circuit haven’t Broken Attorney-Client Constraints on the Investigation of the Murmur in Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Residence
The country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is seized when the political uproar from the classified documents furor intensified.
Robert Birchum held top secret clearance while in the Air Force. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations. The plea agreement states that the residence was not a place that could be used to store classified information.
CNN has learned that the Justice Department is still looking for testimony from other people, after they cited attorney-client privilege.
The hush money investigation is hardly the only legal cloud hanging over the former president. Sources told CNN that the Justice Department convinced a federal judge that Trump’s defense team used one of them to furtherance a crime or fraud related to the existence of classified documents.
CNN previously reported that Corcoran first testified to the grand jury last month when he was asked about what happened in the lead-up to the August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, a person familiar with the situation said.
It was unclear on Tuesday whether the Justice Department has developed new evidence to argue there was criminal planning, or whether prosecutors are resting on the same arguments made when prosecutors sought a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago last year. They had reason to believe that federal records were moved or concealed in the beach club and they have been looking into that and many other things.
It was nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch hunt against the President of the United States and an attempt to prevent him from returning to the White House.
CNN has learned that attorney-client privilege did not apply because prosecutors were able to show Evan Corcoran was used in furtherance of a crime.
Judges of the DC Circuit have demanded more information from Trump’s team by early Wednesday morning and a deadline for them to respond by 6 a.m.
Already a 2024 candidate for the White House, Trump has both celebrated how an indictment would help him politically and complained about how “unfair” it would be. Sources told CNN that he toyed with the idea of a media spectacle around it and also ignored the possibility of criminal charges.
Two advisers said that the former president seemed to have distanced himself from the issue in order to be ready to be indicted, although one adviser said that he felt like he had resigned himself.
In the latest twist in the case, CNN reported exclusively Tuesday evening that communications between Daniels and an attorney who is now representing Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from Trump’s defense.
CNN has not seen the records in question, and doesn’t think there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He says he neither met nor spoke to Daniels. The ethics experts said the impact of the disclosure will depend on the nature of the communications.
Despite the uncertainty about how the yearslong investigation will conclude, several advisers to the former president were frustrated by the lack of information about a potential indictment and the logistical challenges that would come with an appearance in New York.
Trump is scheduled to travel to Waco, Texas, on Saturday for his first major campaign rally since announcing his third presidential bid, though an adviser questioned whether an indictment from the New York grand jury could derail those plans.
Over the weekend, Trump on his social media page called for protests of what he said was his impending arrest. He moved away from that language after allies and advisers called for his rhetoric to be toned down, a sign he is listening.
Still, federal officials, including those at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are monitoring what they say has been an uptick in violent rhetoric online, including calls for “civil war,” since Trump made those calls. But so far, it’s been limited to chatter and has lacked the actionable information, coordination and volume that preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, US officials and security experts told CNN.
