- Title: Attorney for former President Trump appears before grand jury
- Date: 24th March 2023
- Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MARCH 24, 2023) (REUTERS) DONALD TRUMP'S LAWYER EVAN CORCORAN OUTSIDE OF COURT NEW YORK, NEW YORK, AND WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MARCH 24, 2023) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT NYU LAW SCHOOL AND FORMER LITIGATOR AT AKIN GUMP STRAUSS HAUER & FELD, ELISE MAIZEL, SAYING: "So I'll start quickly with a little backdrop of the attorney-client privilege and the crime-fraud exception. So the attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most respected evidentiary privileges in American law, and courts are reluctant to reach it without a really good reason. And one of those really good reasons is the crime-fraud exception. Now, the crime-fraud exception pierces the attorney-client privilege, where a lawyer's services, legal services have been used in furtherance of a crime or a fraud. WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MARCH 24, 2023) (REUTERS) BACK VIEW OF CORCORAN ARRIVING TO COURT NEW YORK, NEW YORK, AND WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MARCH 24, 2023) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT NYU LAW SCHOOL AND FORMER LITIGATOR AT AKIN GUMP STRAUSS HAUER & FELD, ELISE MAIZEL, SAYING: "So there - without the order and without the documents, we're definitely reading tea leaves here. But, I'll tell you a few ways that this has come up in past cases. So, there are a couple of different ways that an attorney's services can be used in service of a crime or fraud. The first category is where the client has provided misinformation, has lied to the lawyer, and the lawyer has then made representations to either a court or to a government regulator that reflects those misrepresentations. So that's one category. Another category would be where the lawyer is an active co-conspirator in a fraud. They say, let's do this. Let's use this tool of obfuscation to get around the law here. And then the third category, and this is one that's probably not relevant here, is when the lawyer sort of goes rogue and commits fraud on their own. But I certainly don't think that that's going to be a category that's relevant in this case, given the target of the investigation." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT NYU LAW SCHOOL AND FORMER LITIGATOR AT AKIN GUMP STRAUSS HAUER & FELD, ELISE MAIZEL, SAYING: "The classic saying is you can't use privilege as a sword and shield, so clients can't use their lawyer services and abuse the privilege. And here what we're seeing is that there is some indication that the court saw that there was some abuse of that attorney-client relationship going on."
- Embargoed: 7th April 2023 19:45
- Keywords: Donald Trump Evan Corcoran attorney attorney-client documents
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, AND WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, AND WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES
- Country: US
- Topics: North America,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA001003324032023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: FOR EXTENSIVE FILE FOOTAGE - PLEASE SEE EDIT 9793-USA-TRUMP/DOCUMENTS
Donald Trump's attorney Evan Corcoran appeared on Friday (March 24) before a federal grand jury investigating the former U.S. president's retention of classified documents after he left the White House in January 2021.
Corcoran and his attorney Michael Levy entered the federal courthouse in Washington and went to the third floor where the grand jury typically meets.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is leading the Justice Department's investigation of whether Trump improperly took classified documents as he left office and his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, which he falsely claims was the result of widespread fraud.
That is one of a series of investigations, also including a Georgia probe into his attempt to overturn his election defeat and a New York inquiry into whether he illegally paid hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, which swirl around Trump as he seeks the Republican nomination to run for president again in 2024.
Corcoran's appearance comes just two days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a sealed ruling which appeared to compel him to comply with a lower court order to testify and provide records as part of Smith's investigation.
U.S. media outlets including ABC News previously reported that Smith's office was seeking court approval to compel Corcoran's testimony, citing evidence that Trump intentionally mislead his attorneys about his retention of classified materials at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort.
Corcoran sought to block enforcement of the subpoena, citing attorney-client privilege.
"Attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most respected evidentiary privileges in American law, and courts are reluctant to reach it without a really good reason," Assistant Professor at NYU Law School, Elise Maisel said, adding, " The crime-fraud exception pierces the attorney-client privilege, where a lawyer's services, legal services have been used in furtherance of a crime or a fraud."
Maisel is a former litigator for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
ABC reported a federal judge ruled that Smith's team had made a sufficient showing that Trump may have deceived his attorneys in furtherance of a crime, and determined that attorney-client privilege could not be used to shield Corcoran from complying with the grand jury subpoena.
Corcoran and Christina Bobb, another attorney representing Trump, were both involved in talks with the Justice Department last year in the lead-up to the FBI's Aug. 8 search of Trump's Florida property.
In May 2022, Trump received a grand jury subpoena ordering him to turn over any records with classified markings, and officials from the Justice Department and FBI met with Trump's attorneys in June to enforce the subpoena.
At that June meeting, they handed over a single envelope containing 38 documents with classified markings.
In a certification drafted by Corcoran and signed by Bobb, they attested they had thoroughly searched the premises and found no other records bearing classification markings.
That claim later proved to be false, after the FBI discovered about 100 additional classified records among some 13,000 government documents in its Aug. 8 search.
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