Reacting to a report that former Donald Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran sat down with a grand jury for over three hours last Friday after the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. paved the way to pierce the attorney-client protections, an MSNBC legal analysts claimed Donald Trump's use of his lawyers to delay proceedings may come back to haunt him in devastating ways.
In a column for MSNBC, attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa wrote that, among the myriad of lawyers the former president has retained, the strongest evidence that Trump committed criminal acts or knew he was breaking the law could come out if more judges rule the way the Court of Appeals did.
Taking it to the extreme, she wrote one of them could deliver the "fatal blow" that ends in a Trump conviction.
As Rangappa notes, the case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is pursuing against Trump is based on testimony and evidence provided by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen -- and he might not be the last.
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With regard to the DOJ's investigation into Trump's hoarding of confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago report that required the FBI showing up with a warrant, Trump lawyer Christina Bobb was put on the spot for her part in obstruction of justice by signing off and saying all documents had been returned when they had not.
According to Rangappa, "A subsequent search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago, which turned up about 100 additional classified documents, however, revealed that certification to be false. Under questioning by prosecutors, Bobb stated that she had been instructed to sign the certification by Trump’s other attorney, Corcoran. But when Corcoran was brought in to testify in front of the grand jury, he avoided answering the prosecutor’s questions — which presumably concerned how he came to believe from Trump that all of the documents had been returned — citing attorney-client privilege."
With that protection now stripped away, the former president might see his defense fall apart based on Corcoran's testimony.
"While we don’t yet know what transpired during Corcoran’s testimony Friday, we can say that breaking the cone of silence between Trump and his attorney may be the fatal blow for Trump in the Mar-a-Lago investigation. One of the most difficult elements to prove in an obstruction of justice investigation is the defendant’s state of mind," she wrote before adding, "Corcoran is in a position to provide direct evidence that Trump knowingly lied to him that all of the documents had been returned. That can seal the deal for the special counsel — and as icing on the cake, Smith could also charge Trump with making a false statement, since his lies would have induced Corcoran to sign a false certification."
She then added, "But by pulling back the curtain on Trump’s communication with his lawyer, [special counsel Jack] Smith can remove Trump’s Teflon protection and demonstrate why his case is different."
You can read more here.
