SUBSCRIBE FOR $1/WEEK Log in

Trump Documents Inquiry The Indictment, Annotated Trump Is Charged How Indictments Work Where Documents Were Found Other Trump Investigations

Trump Indictment Shows Critical

Evidence Came From One of His Own
Lawyers
M. Evan Corcoran, who was hired to represent the former
president after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for
classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, could be a key witness in the
trial.

Give this article 14

Along with the notes of M. Evan Corcoran, left, prosecutors drew upon text messages
from a number of Donald Trump’s employees and a recording made of him by an
aide. Kenny Holston for The New York Times

By Maggie Haberman , Alan Feuer and Ben Protess

June 11, 2023 Updated 9:15 p.m. ET

The two indictments filed so far against former President Donald J.

Trump — one brought by the Manhattan district attorney, the other
by a Justice Department special counsel — charge him with very
different crimes but have something in common: Both were based,
at least in part, on the words of his own lawyers.

In the 49-page federal indictment accusing him of retaining

classified documents after leaving the White House and scheming
to block government efforts to retrieve them, some of the most
potentially damning evidence came from notes made by one of
those lawyers , M. Evan Corcoran.

Mr. Corcoran’s notes, first recorded into an iPhone and then

transcribed on paper, essentially gave prosecutors a road map to
building their case. Mr. Trump, according to the indictment,
pressured Mr. Corcoran to thwart investigators from reclaiming
reams of classified material and even suggested to him that it
might be better to lie to investigators and withhold the documents
altogether.

Earlier this year, over Mr. Trump’s objections, the special counsel
overseeing the investigation, Jack Smith , obtained the notes
through an invocation of the crime-fraud exception. That exception
is a provision of the law that allows prosecutors to work around the
normal protections of attorney-client privilege if they have reason
to believe and can demonstrate to a judge that a client used legal
advice to further a crime.

The ruling agreeing to the Justice Department’s request by Judge

Beryl A. Howell, then the chief judge of the Federal District Court
in Washington, was crucial to the shape and outcome of the
investigation.

Mr. Trump’s legal fate could now hinge on testimony and evidence
from two men he paid to defend him: Mr. Corcoran, who is still a
member of his legal team, and Michael D. Cohen, a former lawyer
for Mr. Trump who has helped prosecutors in New York with their
case related to the former president’s payment of hush money to a
porn star before the 2016 election. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to
federal charges, including one related to a campaign finance
violation, in 2018. Mr. Corcoran has not been accused of any
wrongdoing.

Their complicated involvement in the two cases reflects the perils

of the former president’s long habit of viewing lawyers as attack
dogs or even political bosses rather than as advocates bound by
Editors’ Picks
ethical rules.

The Beauty of a
‘Walk and Talk’
How the Trump Documents Inquiry Began

What the F.B.I. Seized: On Aug. 8, 2022, the F.B.I. descended on former Gratitude Really is
Good for You.
President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in search of sensitive Here’s What the
government documents he took with him when he left office. Here’s what Science Shows.
agents recovered .
A 20-Minute Boxing
Inside Mar-a-Lago: A New York Times investigation shows how Trump Workout to Build
Strength and
stored classified documents in high-traffic areas at his Florida home and Endurance
private club , where guests may have been within feet of the materials.
Timeline: The federal government tried and failed for more than a year
and a half to retrieve the classified documents from Trump. These are the
key events that led to the F.B.I. search .

The Search Warrant: The warrant that authorized the F.B.I.’s search listed
three criminal laws as the basis of its investigation. Read the warrant .

Now in his late 70s, Mr. Trump is still searching for lawyers in the
mold of the one who first mentored, protected and, in his words,
“brutalized” for him: the ruthless and ultimately disbarred Roy M.
Cohn.

Mr. Trump is due to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.

When the indictment of Mr. Trump was unsealed on Friday, it

became abruptly clear that the notes by Mr. Corcoran — identified
as “Trump Attorney 1” — were far more extensive, and far more
damaging, than previously known.

“What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with
them?” Mr. Corcoran quotes Mr. Trump as saying at one point,
referring to government officials seeking to enforce a subpoena
demanding the return of the documents.

The notes referred to in the indictment underscore the extent to

which the charges were built on evidence from his inner circle.
Along with Mr. Corcoran’s notes, prosecutors drew upon text
messages from a number of his employees and a recording made of
him by an aide. Prosecutors seized phones and subpoenaed
documents from a wide group of his advisers.

For years, accounts from people in Mr. Trump’s circle have shaped
investigators’ understanding in different inquiries.

In the New York case, centered on the hush-money payments to

the porn star, the charges were based in part on testimony from Mr.
Cohen. Mr. Cohen paid the woman, Stormy Daniels, and was
reimbursed by Mr. Trump over time, records and testimony show.
He is now the prosecution’s star witness.

But when Mr. Corcoran’s testimony and notes became a key factor
in the documents case, Mr. Trump made plain that he still viewed
his lawyers as somehow exempt from legal scrutiny.

“I always used to think that attorneys really had a very high status
in life, that when you had an attorney, that attorneys can’t be
subpoenaed, they can’t be summoned to talk,” Mr. Trump told
Newsmax in March after Judge Howell’s ruling. Complaining about
how Mr. Corcoran had been compelled to testify in the documents
investigation, he said: “They bring attorneys in as though they’re,
you know, witnesses to a case. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.”

Mr. Corcoran, who was recommended for the team by Mr. Trump’s
legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, could potentially be a key witness if
the case goes to trial.

The special counsel’s continuing investigation into Mr. Trump’s

efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has included
testimony from key advisers to the former president, as did the
House select committee investigation into the matter.

Mr. Trump has long complained about lawyers or other advisers

taking notes in front of him. But The New York Times had reported
that Mr. Corcoran’s notes were copious, dictated into the Voice
Memos app on his iPhone after a meeting with Mr. Trump about
the subpoena issued in May 2022 demanding the return of any
classified documents he still had at Mar-a-Lago.

In her memorandum of law explaining her ruling that Mr. Corcoran

needed to provide testimony in the documents investigation, Judge
Howell wrote that prosecutors had presented compelling evidence
that Mr. Corcoran was misled by his client, who left the lawyer with
a “blinkered” view about where remaining boxes of documents
were stored.

“The government has sufficiently demonstrated all three

elements” of one of the obstruction statutes “by providing evidence
that the former president intentionally concealed the existence of
additional documents bearing classification markings from
Corcoran, knowing that such deception would result in Corcoran
providing an unknowingly false representation to the government,”
the judge wrote in the 86-page memorandum, according to a
person briefed on its contents.

At one point, according to the notes, Mr. Trump expressed concern

about Mr. Corcoran sorting through the materials in the boxes he
had taken from the White House, even though he had brought Mr.
Corcoran on specifically to handle the Justice Department’s efforts
to recover all material Mr. Trump may still have had.

“I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t,”

the notes quote Mr. Trump as saying. “I don’t want you looking
through my boxes.”

In one of the most damning passages of the notes, Mr. Corcoran

describes how Mr. Trump made a “plucking motion” after he had
placed about 40 secret documents in a folder in preparation for
handing them over to federal prosecutors in compliance with a
subpoena that had demanded the return of all classified documents
in Mr. Trump’s possession.

In his notes, Mr. Corcoran said the gesture made him think that Mr.
Trump was suggesting that he should take the folder to his “hotel
room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know,
pluck it out.”

In another revealing exchange about what Mr. Trump hoped to

communicate to his lawyer about what the former president
expected from him, Mr. Trump spoke admiringly about an
unnamed lawyer for Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state.
Mr. Trump claimed that the lawyer had taken responsibility for
deleting emails from her private server for her, an issue that
prompted an F.B.I. investigation into her handling of government
material.

“He was great, he did a great job,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr.
Corcoran’s retelling in the indictment. “He said that it — that it was
him. That he was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000
emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her
going to the gym and her having beauty appointments. And he was
great. And he, so she didn’t get in any trouble because he said that
he was the one who deleted them.”

Beyond serving as potential evidence for a jury, Mr. Corcoran’s

notes could prove useful to prosecutors in what is sure to be a
contentious pretrial period marked by motions from Mr. Trump’s
lawyers to dismiss the case for various reasons.

One of those efforts to dismiss could be a so-called selective

prosecution motion, arguing that Mr. Trump has been unfairly
charged when a figure like Mrs. Clinton, say, was also investigated
for handling classified information but never faced indictment.

Mr. Corcoran’s detailed accounts of how Mr. Trump sought to avoid

handing back any classified material could be powerful evidence of
his obstruction of the government’s investigation and, for that
reason, serve to distinguish his case from Mrs. Clinton’s.

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence

Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team
that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. @ maggieNYT
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999.
@ alanfeuer
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law
enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his
allies. @ benprotess
A version of this article appears in print on June 12, 2023 of the New York edition with the headline: Notes by Trump’s
Own Lawyer Gave a Road Map to Prosecutors . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read 14 Comments

Give this article 14

Our Coverage of the Trump Documents Case

The Justice Department has filed federal criminal charges against former President
Donald Trump over his mishandling of classified documents.

Getting the Call: Trump was gathered with his core political advisers at his club in
Bedminster, N.J., when he was informed he had been indicted for the second time
in less than three months.

Coming to Full Circle: In 2016, Trump assailed Hillary Clinton for her handling of
sensitive information . Now, the same issue threatens his chances of reclaiming
the presidency.
Picking Florida: The decision to file charges in Miami eliminates what would have
been a considerable risk to the politically fraught case: a legal fight over where
the charges would be filed .

Who is Jack Smith?: The special counsel who indicted Trump is a former
prosecutor who was chosen for his experience in bringing high-stakes cases
against politicians.
Reactions: After the indictment, Trump’s Republican rivals in the 2024
presidential campaign faced an uncomfortable choice : rallying behind the former
president or looking like they weren’t fully on Team G.O.P.

More in Politics Trending in The Times

A Firefighter Drowns After Rushing into

the Sea to Save His Daughter

Joni Mitchell Returns to the Stage,

Golden, Glorious and in Control

via Internet Archive Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press Shutterstock Unanswered in Indictment’s Details on
Kaczynski Is Said to Have Died by Two Trump Lawyers Quit a Day Trump Appointee Will Remain Trump’s Hoarding of Documents: Why?
Suicide in Prison After His Indictment Judge in Documents Case, Clerk
Says What Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver
and Others Wore to Party

Tens of Thousands of Dead Fish Wash

Ashore on Gulf Coast in Texas

While Downtown Flounders, This San

Francisco Neighborhood Is Thriving
Jon Cherry for The New York Times Doug Mills/The New York Times

Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric Unanswered in Indictment’s Details Thousands of Bylines to His Name, and
in His Defense Disturbs Experts on Trump’s Hoarding of Documents: One That’s Not
Why?
Opinion: Harry Is a More Interesting
Editors’ Picks
Prince Than We Deserved

The Hottest Thing in Real Estate Is a

Loan From Two Years Ago

Juilliard Fires Professor After Sexual

Misconduct Inquiry

Illustration by Tomi Um Nicholas Sansone for The New York Times Illustration by The New York Times; Valerii Minhirov/Getty
Images
My Siblings’ Inheritance Depends A 20-Minute Boxing Workout to
on Whom They Marry. Is That Build Strength and Endurance What Is a ‘Beige Flag’?
Wrong?

Go to Home Page »

news Opinion Arts Living More Subscribe

Home Page Today's Opinion Today's Arts Automotive Reader Center Home Delivery
World Columnists Art & Design Games The Athletic Digital Subscriptions
Coronavirus Editorials Books Education Wirecutter
Games
U.S. Guest Essays Best Sellers Book List Food Cooking
Politics Letters Dance Health Headway Cooking
New York Sunday Opinion Movies Jobs Live Events Email Newsletters
Business Opinion Video Music Love The Learning Network Corporate Subscriptions
Tech Pop Culture Magazine Tools & Services Education Rate

Science Television Parenting Podcasts

Mobile Applications
Sports Theater Real Estate Video Replica Edition
Wildfire Tracker Video: Arts Style Graphics International
Obituaries T Magazine TimesMachine Canada
Today's Paper Travel Times Store Español
Corrections Manage My Account 中文网
Trending NYTLicensing

© 2023 The New York Times Company NYTCo Contact Us Accessibility Work with us Advertise T Brand Studio Your Ad Choices Privacy Policy Terms of Service Terms of Sale Site Map Help Subscriptions