As the legal peril piles up on former President Donald Trump from every conceivable direction, with no real end in sight, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti spoke up this week to publicly note that the ex-president’s current legal situation has officially turned not only “unusual,” but “very dangerous.”
Mariotti took to Twitter with his legal analysis of the recent bombshell ruling handed down by Judge Beryl Howell, and the massive significance of the fact that Howell found evidence showing that Donald J. Trump blatantly lied to his own legal team with regard to his possession of the stolen, top-secret, highly-classified government documents he had hidden away at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort turned post-White House personal home.
Of particular interest to the former federal prosecutor was what, exactly, Howell ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to turn over to federal prosecutors in the case.
Writing on Twitter, Mariotti noted, “She… ordered him to produce handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings. That is really important… Regardless of who he recorded, the Judge found that those recorded conversations constitute evidence of what she called Trump’s ‘criminal scheme.’ That could be extremely powerful and important evidence.”
5/ She ordered that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran should comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony regarding privileged communications.
She also ordered him to produce handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.
That is really important.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 22, 2023
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Calling Howell’s brutal ruling “remarkable,” the former federal prosecutor noted that this development opens the door for Corcoran to essentially spill his guts to prosecutors about the conversations he’s had with the scandal-ridden former president, as Corcoran faces his own slew of potential criminal liability in relation to the allegedly falsified statement he penned last year, as the document scandal was breaking, legally asserting that his ex-presidential client had turned over all of the classified government documents in his possession to the Justice Department.
That statement was not true, as countless documents and materials remained at the Trump-owned Palm Beach compound.
“In my experience, the crime-fraud exception is often discussed but rarely ever invoked,” Mariotti explains. “I can’t remember an actual invocation of crime-fraud in my roughly 20 years of criminal law practice. This is an unusual situation and a very dangerous one for Trump.”
15/ Clients are usually unguarded with their lawyers, with good reason. That’s why we have attorney-client privilege.
But when privilege is pierced? That could be a big problem for Trump, especially since those communications appear to be related to obstruction of justice. /end
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 22, 2023
See the former federal prosecutor’s full Twitter thread here:
THREAD: What should we make of news that Donald Trump deliberately misled his own attorneys regarding classified documents?
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 22, 2023
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
