Evan Corcoran was Donald Trump’s main lawyer involved in turning over classified-marked documents held at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Photograph: Alex Kent/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s main lawyer involved in turning over classified-marked documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort to the justice department last year must provide additional testimony in the criminal investigation, a federal judge ruled on Friday, overriding his objections of attorney-client privilege.
The ruling marks a major moment in the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of national security materials and obstruction of justice that could open up new avenues of information to the special counsel overseeing the matter.
Evan C. Cochran
In a sealed ruling, the chief US judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, found that the justice department had shown sufficient prima facie evidence that the legal advice Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran gave to the former president could have been used in furtherance of a crime.
The order from Howell granted some aspects – while denying other points – of the department’s motion to compel testimony from Corcoran on a range of subjects he discussed with Trump as prosecutors focus on his role in the obstruction part of the investigation.
Corcoran must narrowly testify about his communications with Trump about how to comply with a grand jury subpoena issued last May that demanded the return of any documents in his possession bearing classified markings, according to sources familiar with the matter.
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The Trump legal team will seek a stay of the order pending an appeal, a lawyer for the former president confirmed to the Guardian. That could leave the issue unresolved for months given how long the US court of appeals in Washington DC – and then the US supreme court – can take to rule on cases.
“Whenever prosecutors target the attorneys, that’s usually a good indication their underlying case is very weak, ” a Trump spokesperson said. “If they had a real case, they wouldn’t need to play corrupt games with the constitution.
But the momentous ruling represented a significant victory for the justice department in the case. And if it is upheld, Howell’s ruling could make Corcoran a crucial witness in the criminal investigation, and it could force him to testify against his client.
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The obstruction part of the Trump documents investigation is centered on the former president’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena in May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.
In June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.
But, according to court filings, the justice department developed evidence that more documents which were marked as classified remained at the resort, along with “evidence of obstruction”. And when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.
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Corcoran is among three Trump lawyers connected to the documents case who have recently appeared before federal grand jurors in Washington, the Guardian previously reported, in addition to Bobb and one of Trump’s civil lawyers, Alina Habba, who searched his office in an unrelated case.
Corcoran, however, declined to testify about his conversations with Trump relating to how they responded to the subpoena, including what steps they took to conduct a thorough search of Mar-a-Lago, citing attorney-client privilege protections that ordinarily shield such communications.Twitter icon A stylized bird with an open mouth, tweeting. Twitter LinkedIn icon The word in. LinkedIn Fliboard icon A stylized letter F. Flipboard Facebook Icon The letter F. Facebook Email icon An envelope. It indicates the ability to send an email. Email Link icon An image of a chain link. It symobilizes a website link url. Copy Link
M. Evan Corcoran, a once little-known, low-profile defense lawyer, has emerged in recent months as a key figure in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago raid saga as one of Donald Trump's most recent legal hires.
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Corcoran joined the embattled former president's legal team in April — Trump offered Corcoran the job without ever having met him, according to The Washington Post — and quickly entrenched himself in his client's myriad legal troubles.
But Corcoran himself has become headline fodder in the aftermath of the FBI's August 8 raid on Trump's South Florida residence, during which agents seized 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked top secret, from the former president's residence and private club.
A former federal prosecutor turned white collar criminal defense attorney, Corcoran is a partner at the Baltimore law firm Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White. According to his webpage on the site, Corcoran represented an insurance company in a $4 billion insurance coverage case stemming from the World Trade Center collapse, and defended corporate officials in the Justice Department's cartel investigations.
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The lawyer apparently made a name for himself in complex business litigation and government enforcement actions before becoming ensnared in the legal woes of Trumpworld.
Most notably, Corcoran represented Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for the Trump administration, in his contempt of Congress case. Earlier this summer, A jury in Washington, DC, found Bannon guilty of the charges against him, despite Corcoran's appeal that the case was unjustly fueled by politics.
Corcoran found himself defending Bannon after nearly taking a top role in the same US attorney's office that would later go on to prosecute the War Room host.
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In early 2020, Corcoran was in line to become the second-ranking official in the federal prosecutor's office under Tim Shea, a top Trump-era Justice Department official whom then-Attorney General William Barr had appointed as the acting US attorney in Washington. Shea arrived as an outsider and turned to Corcoran, a law school friend who had served as a federal prosecutor in the office in the 1990s, for the role of first assistant US attorney, according to people familiar with the offer.
But, within months, Shea was forced out of the US attorney role amid outcryover the Justice Department leadership's interventions in theprosecutions of Roger Stoneand former Trump national security advisorMichael Flynn, ultimately ruining Corcoran's would-be return to the office.
Beyond his experience with Bannon, Corcoran also waded into the world of the Capitol riot, representing the longtime Capitol police officer who was indicted on charges of obstructing the DOJ's investigation into the siege, as well as defending a Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty last year to participating in the riot.
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A person familiar with Corcoran's interaction with Trump told The Post last month that the former president offered his newfound attorney the job without ever meeting him after being introduced via a conference call by another Trump advisor.
Corcoran has since found himself embroiled in Trump's most recent legal drama and could theoretically be implicated in the mess, as he and another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, both communicated with the DOJ during the months-long effort by government officials to retrieve boxes of classified documents from Trump's resort.M. Evan Corcoran arrives at a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C, on July 22. He is representing former President Donald Trump in Trump’s documents battle with the federal government. Photo by Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press.
One of the lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in his documents battle with the federal government is M. Evan Corcoran, a former partner at Wiley Rein, who once took about six years off from practicing law.
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“In some ways, [former] President Trump and Evan [are] a study in contrasts, ” said Douglas Gansler, a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, in an interview with Law.com. “Trump has a very uncomfortable relationship with the truth, he’s flamboyant, he’s bombastic—and Evan is none of those things. So it’s an interesting yin and yang relationship, I would imagine.”
Corcoran’s first job after graduating from the Georgetown University Law Center was as a staff member for the House Appropriations Committee. After working as an assistant U.S. attorney, Corcoran went on to join Wiley Rein in 2000, in which he became a partner two years later.
At Wiley Rein, Corcoran represented an insurance company in a $4 billion insurance coverage case following the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, according to his profile at Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White and the Baltimore Sun.
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Corcoran left Wiley Rein in 2015 and became managing director of the Fortress Investment Group in 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2021, he joined his current firm, Silverman Thompson.
Since joining Silverman Thompson, Corcoran defended former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in his fight against a congressional subpoena and represented a former U.S. Capitol police officer in an obstruction case.
Trump reportedly hired Corcoran in the records case during a conference call in April, according to a report by the Washington Post. They had not previously met.
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Other lawyers representing Trump in the records case are James Trusty and Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general who left Foley & Lardner to take on the case.
Corcoran and another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, are in a harsh spotlight after a government filing suggested that government officials were allegedly misled
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