Trump lawyers could be witnesses — or targets — in DOJ obstruction probe
Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran, two of former President Donald Trump's lawyers, are facing scrutiny for their interactions with the Justice Department over classified material, and legal experts told The Guardian they could soon be witnesses or targets of the obstruction investigation.
For several months, the government has been working to recover classified material and other records that Trump took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his home and club in Florida, with Bobb and Corcoran speaking to officials on behalf of Trump. On Tuesday, the Justice Department submitted a court filing in response to Trump's request for an independent review of the material removed from Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, and wrote in the document that on June 3, Bobb and Corcoran made claims to the DOJ that were false.
The filing states that the Justice Department's chief of counterintelligence, Jay Bratt, and three FBI agents went to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve material that had been subpoenaed. Bobb and Corcoran turned the documents over in an envelope, and Bobb also produced and signed a letter confirming all of the subpoenaed documents were there. Corcoran went on to indicate that the material had been in one storage room, the filing said. However, the Justice Department said it received evidence from several sources showing classified material from the White House remained at Mar-a-Lago, which was proven this month when FBI agents executed a search warrant and found hundreds of classified documents.
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The Justice Department said it is "likely" that on June 3, the lawyers were attempting to conceal presidential and classified documents from the government, and it "raises the prospect that both Bobb and Corcoran could become witnesses in the obstruction investigation," The Guardian writes. Legal experts say federal prosecutors must decide whether Bobb and Corcoran deliberately misled the Justice Department, making them targets of the probe, or they gave false information because they were deceived by Trump. Bobb and Corcoran have not commented on the matter. Read more at The Guardian.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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