Special counsel demands more answers from Trump lawyer on Mar-a-Lago documents

The special counsel investigating former President Trump has asked a federal judge to order one of his lawyers to answer more questions about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents scandal.

In a sign the noose could be tightening around Trump, Special counsel Jack Smith demanded that attorney Evan Corcoran return to the grand jury after he previously used attorney-client privilege to dodge some questions.

Smith has asked U.S. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who is overseeing the probe, to rule that the so-called “crime-fraud exception” to attorney-client privilege applies in Trump’s case.

Attorney-client privilege generally protects lawyers from having to tell prosecutors about confidential conversations their clients have with them. But prosecutors can get around that protection if they can convince a judge that the communications they want information about were made in the course of a crime.

Smith’s demands will likely be heard soon by Howell in a closed-door court session.

It is not the first time during the course of the investigation prosecutors suggested Trump or others committed crimes in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

Trump faces a probe into his admission that he took hundreds of secret documents when he left the White House in 2021 as well as efforts to obstruct that probe.

Prosecutors issued a subpoena to recover any remaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, but officials who visited the property were only given a folder containing only about three dozen records.

Another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, signed a letter falsely stating that a “diligent search” had been conducted for classified documents and that all such records had been returned to the government.

In August, a federal judge approved a search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home, where they found more than 100 classified documents.

Bobb told FBI investigators in an interview last fall that Corcoran prepared the bogus statement and asked her to sign it in her role as custodian of records.

The effort by Smith suggests he is in the home stretch of the documents probe and may soon decide whether to recommend that Attorney General Merrick Garland seek charges against Trump.

Prosecutors would normally seek testimony from a target of a probe only when they are in the final stretches of the investigation and have amassed a significant amount of weighty evidence.

A veteran prosecutor who previously led the Justice Department’s public corruption section, Smith is also investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election results. He recently subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence, but the ex-veep has vowed to resist testifying against his estranged one-time boss.