Happy Wednesday….
WASHINGTON — Two lawyers for former President Donald Trump are
likely to become witnesses or targets in the investigation into how he hoarded documents marked as classified at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate — and secretly held onto some even after the lawyers claimed all sensitive materials had been returned, legal specialists said.
The lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, handled Trump’s interactions with the government over a subpoena in May seeking additional material marked as classified. In a court filing late Tuesday, the Justice Department strongly suggested that people in Trump’s circle concealed documents in defiance of that subpoena, putting a spotlight on the lawyers’ actions.
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They are potentially witnesses — if not defendants,” Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and a U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017, said of the two lawyers.
The filing did not identify which lawyers for Trump took the key actions. But The New York Times has reported that after receiving the subpoena, Corcoran searched through boxes kept in a storage area in Mar-a-Lago’s basement for files with classified markings.
The Times has also reported that on June 3, after Trump’s lawyers met with Jay Bratt, the head of the Justice Department’s counterespionage section, and FBI agents, Bobb signed a statement attesting that all the sensitive material had been returned.
During that visit, Trump’s representatives turned over 38 documents with classified markings and indicated that all the records had been kept in a storage room, that no other records were stored elsewhere and that all available boxes had been searched, prosecutors said.
According to the statement Bobb signed on behalf of Trump, “based upon the information that has been provided to me,” all documents responsive to the subpoena were being returned after a “diligent” search. The Times has reported that she was the designated “custodian of records” for Trump.