A top lawyer for former President Donald Trump reportedly recused himself from the Mar-a-Lago classified files case after appearing before a grand jury.
Despite his recusal, Evan Corcoran is still working for Trump on special counsel Jack Smith‘s inquiry into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the Washington Post reported. Corcoran was recently ordered to answer questions about a subpoena against Trump’s team for sensitive documents that were issued last May,
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Typically, legal ethics rules stipulate that lawyers shouldn’t work for clients in cases where they could become key witnesses. Corcoran’s recusal could be temporary as the rule is not yet mandatory, per the report.
Corcoran was a key figure in the Trump team’s correspondence with the Justice Department over the May 2022 subpoena. The DOJ’s subpoena came months after the National Archives and Records Administration flagged the discovery of classified documents from Trump’s presidential record stash at Mar-a-Lago during a January 2022 exchange.
At least one of Trump’s lawyers, Christina Bobb, reportedly later attested that to the best of her knowledge, Trump’s team relinquished all classified material to the DOJ. However, by August of that year, the FBI conducted a raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and unearthed more than 100 sensitive files during the raid, court documents revealed.
Last month, an appeals court sided with Smith and ordered Corcoran to testify before the grand jury working with Smith on the Mar-a-Lago case. Investigators were keen on learning about his knowledge of Bobb’s role as custodian of the Trump records and a June 24 call he had with Trump, ABC reported.
Smith was appointed to spearhead the DOJ’s reviews revolving around Trump on both the Mar-a-Lago debacle and the Capitol riot as well as efforts to undermine the 2020 election. His appointment came last November after Trump debuted his 2024 campaign.
At the heart of the Mar-a-Lago investigation of Jack’s review are questions about possible obstruction of justice.
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Trump has denied wrongdoing on all fronts pertaining to the Smith inquiry. The former president has said that he declassified the files in question while suggesting that a president can declassify content just by thinking about it.
As part of Smith’s inquiry, investigators have questioned more than one dozen witnesses and combed through a trove of communication records. More than 300 pages worth of classified documents from his presidency days were recovered overall.
