Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 22, 2024. Trump is challenging the right of prosecutors to use notes obtained from his lawyer, Evan Corcoran.
Aileen Cannon To Rule if Jack Smith Can Use ‘Highly Incriminating Evidence’
Judge Aileen Cannon will consider a request by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers to prevent prosecutors using notes taken by Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran.
A Washington, D.C., judge previously ruled that prosecutor Jack Smith could use the notes under the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege rule.
That allows prosecutors to use evidence normally protected by attorney-client privilege if it helps prevent crime.
According to the legal website, Justia, “for this exception to apply, the client must have been in the process of committing a crime or planning to commit a crime.”
“Some of the crimes that often arise in this context include crimes that are meant to obstruct an investigation or ongoing prosecution. A client might tell an attorney about their intent to tamper with witnesses or destroy evidence of a crime,” it said.
Cannon is expected to hold a hearing on Trump’s request on Tuesday.
Trump is facing 40 federal charges over his handling of sensitive materials retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He is accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to return them. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
According to former federal prosecutor, Joyce Vance, “Corcoran’s notes include highly incriminating evidence of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump.”
Writing in her Civil Discourse legal blog on Sunday, Vance said that the notes could be highly damaging to Trump’s defense.
“They appear to confirm that Trump conspired with his co-defendants to keep boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago hidden from Corcoran, so he could not coordinate their return to the government,” she wrote. “Imagine being a former president, and the best argument you can muster is: ‘Please keep prosecutors from using all this good evidence against me because it’s really, really damaging.'”
Vance is a liberal commentator and has been highly critical of the former president in the past.
According to Vance, the contest over Corcoran’s notes was part of Cannon’s “marathon hearing on non-meritorious issues in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Monday and Tuesday.”
Cannon’s series of hearings on Trump’s defense motions began on Friday when she devoted a day to hearing evidence on whether Smith was legally appointed as special counsel to oversee the federal prosecution of the former president.
On Monday, she will hold a separate hearing on whether Smith’s funding is constitutional before considering a prosecution motion that Trump be placed under a gag order for his criticism of the FBI agents who raided his Mar–a-Lago estate in 2022.
The agents took away a large number of classified documents that Trump had removed from the White House.
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