Special Master Review of Donald Trump’s Obstruction to Investigating an Ostruction of Justice Charge at the Mar-a-Lago Resort

On the face of it, this development is troubling since it could suggest a pattern of deception that plays into a possible obstruction of justice charge. On the initial search warrant before the FBI showed up at Trump’s home in August, the bureau told a judge there could be “evidence of obstruction” at the resort.

Trump objected to making the executive privilege distinction Dearie proposed. Cannon adopted a few aspects of Dearie’s plan for how the documents should be categorized.

The review was pushed back by at least a half-month on Thursday, while she also made clear that Trump will still have the ability to bring litigation after the special master process is over.

The criminal investigation was allowed to use the classified documents again thanks to the intervention of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago later in the year and found thousands of additional documents, including many with classified markings.

Cannon on Thursday rejected part of the special master’s plan that would have forced the former President’s legal team to back up his out-of-court claims that the FBI planted evidence.

Cannon said that the parties would make those additional matters known to the Special Master for appropriate resolution and recommendation to the court.

The special master review is not dependent on the Trump legal team providing certain details about his executive privilege claims.

The federal judge removed the special master’s proposed requirement that Trump, when asserting a document is covered by executive privilege, specify whether he believed that barred disclosure within the executive branch versus disclosure outside of it.

The Justice Department has argued that Trump’s executive privilege claims are especially weak because the materials were seized by the executive branch for an executive branch purpose, i.e. a DOJ criminal investigation.

On the challenges of prosecuting the former president after he was accused of lying in the epoch of apocalypse

Cannon explained the issues the parties had faced in securing a vendor to digitise the seized materials for the review.

The department said in a court filing that Trump’s team indicated that data hosting companies wouldn’t work with him. The issue is the size of the evidence collection.

Trump lawyer Christina Bobb had to hire her own lawyer after signing an attestation in June which declared that Trump’s team had conducted a “diligent search” to comply with the Justice Department’s subpoena and returned all documents with classified markings. Bobb, who was Trump’s custodian of records at the time, recently told federal investigators in a voluntary interview that the attestation had been drafted by another Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, for her to sign. A source with knowledge of the event states that Bobb was rushed to Mar-a-Lago to sign the attestation, but insisted on first adding a line that her knowledge was based upon the information that has been provided.

The sworn statement that Bobb submitted to the Justice Department contained a caveat that stated that she would certify based upon the information that was provided to her.

The House January 6 committee voted to subpoena him after he was exposed for his depraved efforts to overthrow the 2020 election and his disregard for duty as his mob invaded the US Capitol.

“The need for this committee to hear from Donald Trump goes beyond our fact-finding. This is a question of how the American people are held accountable. He needs to be held accountable. He is required to answer for his actions,” Thompson said.

But the developments that could hurt Trump the most did not happen on stage. They show how complex the legal landscape is surrounding the ex- President who has not been accused of a crime and how far left to run to account for the presidency that constantly tested the rule of law.

The revelation comes as the former president continues to face a number of notable investigations and lawsuits, including a yearslong investigation into his alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to an adult film star. There are signs that case is nearing an end and Trump and his advisers are awaiting a potential indictment.

The court’s decision steers the court away from the political fray at a time when approval ratings of the 6-3 conservative-leaning court have dipped to new lows and liberals, including President Joe Biden, have attacked the legitimacy of the institution. The order was issued during the hearing of the House select committee’s investigation of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.

The court did not explain why it turned down his emergency request, which could have delayed the case. No dissents were noted, including from conservative justices Trump elevated to the bench and whom he often seems to believe owe him a debt of loyalty.

The discovery of additional records by the two people Trump’s lawyers hired came in November, well after Trump’s team and the FBI under a court-approved warrant unearthed hundreds of other classified pages in his possession following his presidency. At that time, Trump’s lawyers were locked in a dispute with the Justice Department over whether they had adequately searched his properties and turned over all classified records still in his possession. The DOJ’s investigation has continued despite the fact that they were not satisfied.

While television stations gave full coverage of the committee hearing, there were new developments about a Justice Department investigation that could affect the ex- President in January. The DOJ’s criminal probe has the power to make indictments, which is different from the House version.

The New York Times reported that a district attorney in Manhattan is giving evidence to a grand jury investigating the issue of Trump paying off Stormy Daniels. The district attorney in Georgia said last week that they are close to making a decision on the charges against Trump. The ex-president is in no way targeted by the investigation. Smith is looking at Trump’s role in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Trump’s legal team hired two individuals to search Trump Tower in New York, the Bedminster golf club, an office location in Florida, and a storage unit in Florida where ultimately two documents with classified markings were found, CNN has previously reported. The documents were handed over to the FBI. No other documents with classified markings were found during the search of the four Trump’s properties.

When discussing the matter of the Mar-a-Lago incident, the lawyer for the second impeachment of Trump stated that the details did not constitute a case of obstruction of justice.

He said if President Trump or someone on his behalf knew they didn’t have a right to have the documents, they hid them or kept them.

New York’s attorney general asked a state court to block the Trump Organization from moving their assets on Thursday and to keep them from perpetrate what she alleges is a decades-long fraud.

James is seeking a preliminary injunction against the Trumps and their firms because she believes they will continue to engage in fraudulent conduct if the injunction is not granted.

Trump denied any wrongdoing. Jack Smith is a seasoned prosecutor who has been tasked with determining if there is enough evidence that Trump broke the law and if prosecution is appropriate.

The Justice Department tried to force at least five witnesses in the Washington, DC, grand jury to provide more information in the investigation of Donald Trump, CNN has previously reported.

Why Did the Unselected Committee Come Out Fighting Against the Ex-President Donald J.P. Budowich? The Unselect Committee was a Complete BUST

As always, Trump came out fighting on Thursday, one of those days when the seriousness of a crisis he is facing can often be gauged by the vehemence of the rhetoric he uses to respond.

The unanimous vote in the select committee to subpoena the former President was mocked by the first Trump spokesman.

“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Budowich said that Trump-endorsed candidates would sweep the Midterms and restore America First leadership and solutions.

The former President weighed in on his Truth Social network with another post that did not answer the accusations against him, but that was clearly designed to stir a political reaction from his supporters.

Why did the Unselect Committee not ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST,’” Trump wrote.

There is a chance that the ex-president might not fight the subpoena given his history of obstructing efforts to examine his tumultuous presidency.

The bipartisan committee has come under scrutiny from Trump supporters who claim it is an attempt to implicate the president in a political scandal. If the committee wanted to enforce a subpoena, it would have to seek a Congressional referral to the Justice Department. It took such a step with Trump’s political guru, Steve Bannon, who was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress and soon faces a sentencing hearing.

But any effort to follow a similar path if Trump refuses to testify could take months and involve protracted legal battles. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department would consider this a good investment, especially given the advanced state of its own January 6 probe. It is possible the committee will be swept into history once Republicans take over the majority in the House after the elections.

Observers will see the vote to target the ex- President as yet another theatrical flourish in a set of slickly produced hearings, even though there is a slim chance that Trump will comply with a congressional subpoena.

But the committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, said the investigation was no longer just about what happened on January 6, but about the future.

“With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former President, we chip away at the foundation of our Republic,” said the Wyoming lawmaker, who won’t be returning to Congress after losing her primary this summer to a Trump-backed challenger.

Trump’s Attorney General’s Deposition in the Eleventh US Circuit Court of Appeals Against a Special Master: “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman is a Complete Con Job”

Trump had asked the justices to reverse a federal appeals court and allow a special master to review about 100 documents marked classified, a move that could have opened the door for his legal team to review the records and argue that they should be off limits to prosecutors in a criminal case.

Calling the records “extraordinarily sensitive,” the Justice Department had asked the court to stay out of the dispute while legal challenges play out.

The DOJ, in its filing, argued that the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that Cannon “abused her discretion” and inflicted “a serious and unwarranted intrusion on the Executive Branch’s authority to control the use and distribution of extraordinarily sensitive government records.”

A panel of judges on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, however, acting upon a request from the Justice Department, agreed to freeze portions of those orders while the legal dispute plays out.

“The Eleventh Circuit lacked jurisdiction to review, much less stay, an interlocutory order of the District Court providing for the Special Master to review materials seized from President Trump’s home,” Trump told the Supreme Court last week.

Raymond Dearie, the senior US judge appointed as special master, will be “substantially impaired” by the appeals court order and that it will slow “ongoing time-sensitive work,” Trump’s team added.

“Any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a President’s home erodes public confidence in our system,” the filing said.

Cannon, who was appointed by Trump and was the special master, was fundamentally error in his decision to appoint him, said the US Solicitor General.

“This ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman’ case is a complete con job,” Mr. Trump said in his statement. He said Ms. Carroll was not telling the truth, that he did not know her — and that she was not his type: “While I am not supposed to say it, I will.”

A routine order has been placed by the court that allows Mr Trump and Ms.Carroll to keep their depositions confidential. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump wants his deposition to be confidential.

The Justice Department jumped into action on Mr. Trump’s behalf in September 2020, citing a law intended to protect federal employees from litigation stemming from their official duties.

The Judge wrote that the allegations have no relation to the official business of the United States and his comments concerned a sexual assault that took place several decades before he took office.

The 2016 Mar-a-Lago Search by the FBI: Donald Trump’s Correspondence with the Justice Department: Trump and the Cooperative Approach

The offer to let federal investigators observe the search at Trump’s Bedminster property was declined by his attorneys. Trump lawyers did not offer a similar offer for the other properties because of the response from the Justice Department. It is not unusual for the Justice Department to not observe searches that are conducted by law enforcement.

Some in Trump’s inner circle aren’t convinced there are any remaining government documents, after the FBI seized nearly 22,000 pages when they executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August.

The approach comes even as the Trump team continues to argue in court that the records they took from him at the end of his presidency are not his personal property, an argument they first heard from a conservative judicial activist.

A person close to Trump said the former President wants to move on, since he believes this is not a big deal.

People familiar with the situation say that there is a battle being waged behind thescenes in a court proceeding that is under seal. The Trump team could be forced to work with the DOJ to arrange another search in exchange for a judge compelling them to do so.

According to people close to Trump, the former president has become more in favor of the cooperative approach advocated by his lawyers, including Chris Kise who joined his team following the FBI search in August. Kise had faced some challenges from Trump and his advisers.

A person familiar with his comments says Trump complained last Thursday that federal investigators “got to see everything” when they searched his residence.

Among the complicating factors has been Trump’s personal views on the document dispute. He claimed that his team was fully cooperative with investigators, and asked them to return documents, but he changed his mind and said all they had to do was ask. According to court papers and postings on social media, Donald Trump believes that he owns the Mar-a-Lago documents. “I want my documents back!” the former President said in early October.

Getting a lawyer in the DOJ: Attorneys’ Discussion of the 2020 White House Corcoran-Epshteyn Case

Corcoran has insisted to colleagues that he does not believe he faces any legal risk and has not hired a lawyer, according to sources familiar with his situation.

A third Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, had his cellphone seized by the FBI last month and has testified in front of a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Indicting an active candidate for the White House would surely spark a political firestorm. And while no decision has been made about whether a special counsel might be needed in the future, DOJ officials have debated whether doing so could insulate the Justice Department from accusations that Joe Biden’s administration is targeting his chief political rival, people familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The months leading up to the election have not provided respite from the political activity. The January 6 investigations have dealt with burnout at the DC US Attorney’s Office, which is still shouldering the bulk of the probes, as prosecutors are trying to secure guilty pleas from over 800 rioters who were at the Capitol.

According to a defense attorney who works on January 6 matters, they have no idea who will be charged and who won’t.

Special counsels, of course, are hardly immune from political attacks. Both former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under withering criticism from their opponents.

David Rody, a former prosecutor and national security expert, is one of the people Justice officials have looked at.

Rody, whose involvement has not been previously reported, left a lucrative partnership at the prestigious corporate defense firm Sidley Austin in recent weeks to become a senior counsel at DOJ in the criminal division in Washington, according to his LinkedIn profile and sources familiar with the move.

Towards a Special Counsel for the US Attorney’s Office in Investigating Right-wing Extremist Prosecutor Timing: When Will the FOJJ Investigate?

Even though the DC US Attorney’s Office is prosecuting sedition cases against right-wing extremists, the team at their office is growing.

A number of other prosecutors joined the team, including a high-ranking fraud and public corruption prosecutor who moved out of his supervisor’s position and a prosecutor with many years of experience in criminal appellate work.

The decision of whether to charge Trump or his associates will ultimately fall to Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom President Joe Biden picked for the job because his tenure as a judge provided some distance from partisan politics, after Senate Republicans blocked his Supreme Court nomination in 2016.

Several former prosecutors believe the facts exist for a potentially chargeable case. Garland will have to make a difficult decision about how to approach the potential indictment of a former President.

In March, Garland avoided answering a CNN question about the prospect of a special counsel for Trump-related investigations, but said that the Justice Department does “not shy away from cases that are controversial or sensitive or political.”

“What we will avoid and what we must avoid is any partisan element of our decision making about cases,” Garland said. “That is what I’m intent on ensuring that the Department decisions are made on the merits, and that they’re made on the facts and the law, and they’re not based on any kind of partisan considerations.”

Garland’s tough decisions go beyond Trump. The investigation of Hunter Biden, son of the president, is nearing an end, people briefed on the matter say. Also waiting in the wings: a final decision on the investigation of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, after prosecutors recommended against charges.

“They’re not going to charge before they’re ready to charge,” one former Justice Department official with some insight into the thinking around the investigations said. The DOJ usually only has five years to bring charges in cases, so there will be added pressure to get through the review earlier.

Willis has observed her own version of a quiet period around the midterm election and is seeking to bring witnesses before the grand jury in the coming weeks. CNN indictments could come by the year’s end, according to sources.

In the Georgia election interference investigation, key Trump allies, including Lindsey Graham and former White House chief of staff MarkMeadows, have sought to fight subpoenas.

How those disputes resolve in Georgia – including whether courts force testimony – could improve DOJ’s ability to gather information, just as the House Select Committee’s January 6 investigation added to DOJ’s investigative leads from inside the Trump White House.

The DOJ wanted to keep the investigation quiet in the weeks leading up to the election, but this was not possible because of Trump’s actions.

The outcome of the intelligence review of those documents may determine if criminal charges will be filed, according to one source familiar with the Justice Department’s approach.

On Tuesday a federal judge ordered Trump adviser Kash Patel to testify before a grand jury investigating the handling of federal records at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

The DC District Court granted immunity from prosecution to anyone who gives any information to the investigation, another important step that moves the Justice Department closer to charging the case.

The House Select Committee’s Final Report on the January 6, 2020, Attack Revisited: Evidence and Implications for the DOJ

The final report the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack is set to release Wednesday launches a new era for criminal investigators, politicians and members of the public who have been eager to see the nuts and bolts of its work.

The evidence presented in the final report and the information revealed by the panel’s trove of transcripts will be the first time the DOJ gets a real look at what the panel has and could inform the DOJ’s criminal probes into January 6 more so than the criminal referrals the select committee made.

The summary claimed that the panel has a range of evidence which suggests specific efforts to obstruct the investigation. Concerns include that Trump’s political committee has incentives to defend President Trump rather than represent their own clients.

The panel in its summary of its report said it was aware of multiple efforts by the President to contact witnesses and that the DOJ is aware of at least one of them.

Some witnesses were unnecessarily combative, others answered hundreds of questions with variant of “I do not remember” or “I do not recall”, others testified from lawyer- written talking points rather than their own recollections, and still others resisted telling the truth.

“The public can ultimately make its own assessment of these issues when it reviews the Committee transcripts and can compare the accounts of different witnesses and the conduct of counsel,” the summary previewed.

The Ornato conversation was the subject of testimony from Hutchinson and a White House employee. But “Ornato professed that he did not recall either communication, and that he had no knowledge at all about the President’s anger.”

In terms of financing after the 2020 presidential election and through the January 6 rallies, the committee says it gathered evidence indicating that Trump “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th.”

“For example, the Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop Democrats from ‘trying to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office,’” the summary states.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, has said the panel has evidence that members of the Trump family and inner circle – including Kimberly Guilfoyle – personally benefited from money that was raised based on the former president’s false election claims, but the panel has never gone as far to say a financial crime has been committed.

Special counsel Jack Smith sent a letter to the select committee on December 5 requesting all of the information from the panel’s investigation, a source told CNN.

The committee members, especially Thompson, felt strongly the depositions were the property of the committee, despite DOJ initially asking for all of its transcripts.

According to CNN, a source close to the legal team for the former president said that they wanted to read the committee transcripts to see if they differed from what they had been told.

Aides and advisers to the former president are also hoping the release of the panel’s transcripts will provide new information about the DOJ criminal investigation into January 6.

Various Republican lawmakers have sought to discredit the select committee’s work since its inception and have argued that the panel has not addressed the security failures that led to the US Capitol breach. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, and five other House Republicans were subpoenaed by the committee for refusing to cooperate with their investigation. The panel took the unprecedented step of referring the four returning members of Congress to the House Ethics Committee.

McCarthy called on the select committee to preserve the records and transcripts of its meetings after promising to hold hearings on security failures that led to the Capitol breach.

On the investigation of the January 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and the potential mishandling of public documents at Mar-a-Lago

One of the former president’s lawyers told CNN on Saturday that the January 6 referral to the Justice Department by the criminal committee was worthless.

Parlatore was responding to the unprecedented criminal referrals that the bipartisan select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol sent to the Justice Department earlier this week. Committee members said they believed Trump was guilty of at least four federal crimes, including conspiracy and obstructing a joint session of Congress.

“It’s political noise, but it doesn’t have any effect, as of right now, on our defense,” said Parlatore, who represents Trump in the Justice Department probes into January 6 and the potential mishandling of government documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Parlatore told CNN on Saturday that he was sure there weren’t any more records with classification markings still at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “Everything that was found has been turned over.”

A federal judge has asked former President Donald Trump’s attorneys to turn over the names of the individuals hired to search four properties for documents late last year, a source familiar with the order told CNN.

Last month, federal judge Beryl Howell, the chief of the DC District Court, declined to hold Trump in contempt of court and urged the Justice Department and Trump’s team to work out a resolution as investigators attempt to make sure all national security records are back in the possession of the federal government. According to sources, the judge questioned prosecutors on how she could hold Trump’s team in contempt given the steps his lawyers have taken to alleviate the Justice Department’s concerns that there may still be records in Trump’s possession.

Taken together, the investigative moves underscore that there is continued grand jury activity in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, at a time when the Justice Department has newer inquiries into unsecured national security records underway involving President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Two people who found two classified documents in a Florida storage facility for Donald Trump have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that’s looking at the former president’s handling of national security records at his Mar-a-Lago residence, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Two people who went to search for four Donald Trump properties last fall were interviewed for three hours separately last week.

They were hired to search Trump’s Bedminster golf club, Trump Tower in New York, an office location in Florida and a storage unit in Florida last October, months after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources said.

Federal prosecutors are looking at files on a laptop of at least one staff member from the Trump Organization, according to multiple sources. At times, the special counsel’s office has been unwilling to negotiate with defense attorneys over recent subpoenas, leading to tense conversations.

One source said that investigators are trying to determine if there is an electronic paper trail around classified documents, by pushing for access to computers.

After some classified documents were found at the properties of Biden and Pence, it seems like they were more interested in cooperating with the FBI than they were with the DOJ. FBI agents were able to gain access to Mar-a-Lago with a search warrant because they claimed the documents belonged to the ex-president. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.

Jack Smith, the General Counsel, and the Public Interest in the Mar-A-Lago Insight into the Two-State Campaign

Almost weekly, Jack Smith and prosecutors who work for him have used a federal grand jury to question witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

The twice-impeached former president, who tried to steal an election and is accused of fomenting an insurrection, launched his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday as he seeks a stunning political comeback.

“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. The ex-president made the statement on the trail over the weekend.

This is a message that may be attractive to some of Trump’s base voters who themselves feel alienated from the federal government and previously bought into his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It is a technique in which a strongman leader may argue that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is used by demagogues throughout history.

The latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation and could indicate that Smith was leaning towards indictments, according to a former special counsel at the Department of Defense.

It appears that he is trying to make sure that if they testify against Trump, that evidence will be used against them in court.

The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.

On a more granular level, the report about the grand jury underscores that for all the political noise, the investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is taking place inside its own legal bubble.

Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.

There are two special counsel investigations looking into Trump and Biden. There is no overlap between them. They will both be in the public eye if findings are made public.

Were Trump, for instance, to be prosecuted – over what so far appears to be a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction – and Biden is not, the ex-president would incite a firestorm of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president enjoys protections from prosecution because of historic Justice Department guidance, it’s hard to see how the political ground for prosecuting just one of them could hold firm – especially if Biden and Trump are rival presidential candidates in 2024.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/trump-documents-grand-jury-2024-campaign/index.html

The investigation of the office of Robert Birchum, whose legal services were used to further a crime or fraud at Mar-a-Lago

When secret material is taken home, lower-ranking members of the federal workforce will be treated fairly, even if their reputation is hurt.

Robert Birchum served in the Air Force for over 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. He kept a lot of files with information that was marked as top secret, secret or confidential outside of authorized locations. According to the plea agreement, the residence was not a location that was authorized to store classified information.

The Justice Department has asked a court to make Evan Corcoran, Donald Trump’s attorney, testify about his client’s case, according to two sources.

The hush money investigation is hardly the only legal cloud hanging over the former president. In a separate development in a distinct probe, the Justice Department has convinced a federal judge that Trump used one of his defense attorneys in furtherance of a crime or fraud related to the existence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the matter told CNN Tuesday evening.

Corcoran recently appeared before the grand jury for roughly four hours and is the third attorney to testify before the grand jury. He has not yet appeared a second time, and it remains to be seen if he ultimately does.

It was unclear on Tuesday whether the Justice Department has developed new evidence to argue there was criminal planning, or whether prosecutors are resting on the same arguments made when prosecutors sought a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago last year. They had cause to believe federal records were moved within the beach club, and have been investigating both of the handling of national security records and obstruction of justice.

The move is nothing more than a targeted witch hunt against President Trump, designed to stop the American people from returning him to the White House.

Sources tell CNN that the ruling by the judge was sealed because she determined Evan Corcoran’s legal services were used in furtherance of a crime.

The DC Circuit judges are demanding more information and arguments from Trump’s legal team by late Tuesday night and prosecutors have until 6 a.m. on Wednesday to respond.

We are in a new place. We do not know what this does in the long term. We’d rather he just not be indicted than get some potential boost,” a source involved with Trump’s campaign told CNN.

Two advisers said the former president seems resigned himself to the likelihood of an indictment, with one calling him a “compartmentalization.”

CNN reported exclusively Tuesday night that communications between Daniels and a lawyer for Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from Trump’s defense.

CNN has not seen the records in question, and Tacopina denies that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He said that he never met or spoke to Daniels. Ethics experts said the impact that the disclosure will have on the case will depend on the circumstances and the substance of the communications.

Several advisers to the former president expressed frustration at the lack of information around a possible indictment and the logistical troubles that would come with an appearance in New York.

An adviser questioned if an indictment from the New York grand jurors could derail the plans of Trump’s first major campaign rally since announcing his third presidential bid.

Trump called for protests on his social media page over the weekend, saying he was about to be arrested. After being told to tone down his language, he moved away from it in the last few days.

Still, federal officials, including those at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are monitoring what they say has been an uptick in violent rhetoric online, including calls for “civil war,” since Trump made those calls. But so far, it’s been limited to chatter and has lacked the actionable information, coordination and volume that preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, US officials and security experts told CNN.