Trump legal team loses appeal to keep attorney from testifying in classified docs probe 

Donald Trump’s lawyer will be forced to hand over documents and won’t be able to use attorney-client privilege as a shield to keep him from answering questions in front of a grand jury investigating the ex president’s handling of classified documents, a court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge federal appeals panel on the DC circuit court rejected the Trump legal team’s effort to stay a Friday ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell.

That ruling called for lawyer Evan Corcoran to provide investigators with records, including handwritten notes, invoices and transcripts of personal audio recordings related to what Howell called Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme” to conceal classified material at his Mar-a-Lago estate. 

In her Friday ruling, Howell agreed with prosecutors that there was “sufficient” evidence that Trump, 76, “intentionally concealed” the existence of classified material from his lawyer, putting the attorney in a position to deceive the government. ​​

As a result, Howell also ordered Corcoran to comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony on six lines of inquiry over which he had previously refused to provide answers for, citing attorney-client privilege.

Trump is unlikely to appeal Wednesday’s ruling to the Supreme Court, sources told CNN.

Corcoran is likely of particular interest to special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the government’s multiple criminal investigations into Trump, because he’s the lawyer who drafted a statement signed by another Trump attorney, Christina Bobb, in June 2022 that declared his legal team had fully complied with a subpoena seeking classified documents housed at the former president’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate. 

Two months later, the FBI recovered hundreds of pages of classified material during its search of a Mar-a-Lago. 

Trump is reportedly being investigated for obstruction and violations of the Presidential Records Act.