Attorneys representing former President Donald Trump — John Rowley, James Trusty and Lindsay Halligan — met with special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors at the Justice Department at 10 a.m. Monday.
A few weeks later the meeting took place Trump’s lawyers He had sought a meeting with top central law enforcement officials. The former president’s lawyers spent less than two hours inside the Chief Justice building and declined to comment on their meeting as they left.
CBS News cameras caught Trump’s legal team walking into the Justice Department. The former president’s lawyers did not speak when they entered the building in Washington. A person familiar with the meeting between the three attorneys and the department said Attorney General Merrick Garland was not present.
Two people familiar with the investigation said Trump’s legal team has been frustrated with how the attorney-client matter has been handled in recent months and may raise their concerns during Monday’s meeting, particularly in discussions with prosecutors. Before the grand jury.
Earlier this year, a federal judge said Trump’s lawyer must testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., investigating the former president’s retention of documents with classified identities.
lawyer, Evan Corcoran, declined to answer questions from investigators about his conversations with Trump, citing attorney-client privilege concerns. On June 24, 2022, as investigators sought to secure documents at Trump’s home and video surveillance tapes from Mar-a-Lago, lawyers in the special counsel’s office wanted to question Corcoran about the alleged call to Trump. told CBS News last week.
The special counsel’s panel asked DC District Chief Judge Beryl Howell to overrule Corcoran’s claims of privilege and compel her to testify against her client, Trump. Howell’s secret order only partially granted that request and the so-called “felony-fraud exception” would apply to Corcoran’s testimony on a specific set of questions, the sources said.
The appeals court denied the former president’s request to exclude Corcoran’s testimony and upheld Howell’s ruling. Judge James Bosberg, who ruled earlier this year that former Vice President Mike Pence must testify before a grand jury in the special counsel’s second investigation into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, replaced Howell as presiding judge in DC federal court. election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating the former president after documents containing classified White House identification were discovered in August 2022 at Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. restore records, according to multiple sources close to the investigation.
Multiple sources familiar with the investigation believe an indictment in the documents case is imminent, and Trump lawyers are expected to meet with the Justice Department at some point in recent days. Efforts by lawyers so far.
Grand jury testimony has slowed in recent weeks, sources said, and the investigation may be winding down. Many former White House aides and Mar-a-Lago employees — from security officers and valets — have been called to testify in undercover proceedings in Washington, DC.
The special counsel has gathered evidence that Trump’s staff moved the boxes the day before the FBI and a federal prosecutor visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022. This was first reported by The Washington Post.
Trump lawyers Rowley and Trustee wrote a letter in May saying their client was being treated “unfairly” and asking them to “discuss the injustice being perpetrated by your special counsel and his attorneys.”
Smith’s office declined to comment.
