Hugo Lowell has been following the Trump crime beat for The Guardian, and files this report showing that Trump's legal team knew about and warned Trump about keeping classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago pool closet.
Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.
The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.
Last June, Corcoran found roughly 40 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained at the property. That was later shown to be untrue, after the FBI later returned with a warrant and seized 101 additional classified documents.
The federal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith has recently focused on why the subpoena was not compiled with, notably whether Trump arranged for boxes of classified documents to be moved out of the storage room so he could illegally retain them.
In particular, prosecutors have fixated on Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, after he told the justice department that Trump told him to move boxes out of the storage room before and after the subpoena. The activity was captured on subpoenaed surveillance footage, though there were gaps in the tapes.
The warning was one of several key moments that Corcoran preserved in roughly 50 pages of contemporaneous notes described to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, which prosecutors have viewed in recent months as central to the criminal investigation.
The notes revealed how Trump and Nauta had unusually detailed knowledge of the botched subpoena response, including where Corcoran intended to search and not search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as when Corcoran was actually doing his search.
Although ordinarily off limits to prosecutors, the notes ended up before the grand jury in Washington hearing evidence in the case after a US appeals court allowed attorney-client privilege to be pierced because judges believed Trump might have used Corcoran’s legal advice in furtherance of a crime.
The notes described how Corcoran told Nauta about the subpoena before he started looking for classified documents because Corcoran needed him to unlock the storage room – which prosecutors have taken as a sign that Nauta was closely involved at essentially every step of the search.
Corcoran then described how Nauta had offered to help him go through the boxes, which he declined and told Nauta he should stay outside. But going through around 60 boxes in the storage room took longer than expected, and the search ended up lasting several days.
The notes also suggested to prosecutors that there were times when the storage room might have been left unattended while the search for classified documents was ongoing, one of the people said, such as when Corcoran needed to take a break and walked out to the pool area nearby.
In addition to his exchange with Trump, Corcoran described Trump’s facial expressions and reactions whenever they discussed the subpoena. The unusually detailed nature of his notes is said to have irritated Trump, who only learned about them after the notes themselves were subpoenaed.
The notes did not address why Corcoran only looked in the storage room, though he separately testified to the grand jury that while Trump did not mislead him about where to search, he did not say where to search either. The New York Times earlier reported a summary of his testimony.
Corcoran did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Like all decent lawyers, Evan Cochran kept notes. The thing is, attorney-client privilege goes poof when there's probable cause to believe that the legal counsel may have aided in commission of a crime, and "Covering up and lying about illegally storing classified documents" is definitely a criminal act.
So now those notes are part of Jack Smith's growing pile of evidence, and Trump knows it.
The rest of the GOP knows Trump is poison as well and fewer are willing to drink the Kool-aid in public.
Less than a month after the midterms, Republican recruiters were already plotting how to persuade their prized 2022 Senate nominee to run for a Colorado congressional seat in 2024.
Joe O’Dea was popular, personally wealthy and had adopted the kind of moderate positions that would endear him to voters in a swing suburban district, perhaps more easily in a state that has quickly turned blue. He was — and still is — interested. But among his top considerations: what it would mean to share a ballot with Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
As Republicans start to assemble a crop of contenders that can retake the Senate and grow their excruciatingly thin majority in the House, they are running into a persistent complication. The current GOP presidential primary, and Trump’s early dominance, has spooked some potential down-ballot candidates, according to a dozen recruiters, operatives and congressional hopefuls who were granted anonymity to speak candidly with POLITICO about the recruitment process.
Many of their prospective recruits are wary of running alongside Trump, who dominates the spotlight, repels crucial independent voters and forces his fellow Republicans to answer for his unpredictable statements. It’s a dynamic that candidates don’t relish, and it has only come into sharper focus since Trump’s CNN town hall, when he spent 70 minutes on primetime television this month unleashing a torrent of incendiary remarks.
Few Republicans publicly worry the former president will seriously damage their bench in either chamber, and they maintain that many of the candidates on the fence will ultimately decide to run. But Trump’s resurgence has notably chilled recruitment across the country. And because only a handful of seats separate both parties in the House and Senate, any one flop could narrow the path to majority. There’s little margin for error.
“Some people have asked me, ‘Should I run next year?’ If you’re in a swing district, I said, ‘No,’” said former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), who lost her suburban district in 2018 during a Trump-fueled Democratic wave. “If he’s going to be the nominee, you are better to wait and run after he washes out. Because you won’t have a prayer of winning.”
They're all attached to Trump of course, every single one of them. The only question is how many races that will cost these Republican lackeys, and if 2022 is any indication, 2024 is going to be very bad for the GOP.
Good for America, of course.
But bad for Trump and the GOP.
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