Turning on his iPhone one day last year, attorney M. Evan Corcoran recorded his thoughts on a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump in an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
In full sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, Corcoran recounted in detail a nearly month-long period of the document investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Corcoran’s recounting of his recollections covered his initial meeting with Mr. Trump in May of last year to discuss a Justice Department subpoena seeking the return of all classified materials in the former president’s possession, the people said.
It also encompassed a search Mr. Corcoran launched last June in response to a subpoena of any relevant records kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. He conducted the search in preparation for a visit by prosecutors, who were on their way to enforce the subpoena and collect any sensitive materials found there.
Government investigators rarely gain clear insight into a lawyer’s private dealings with clients, let alone one as prominent as Trump. A recording like the voice memo Mr. Corcoran made last year, during a long drive to a family event, according to two people briefed on the recording, is generally protected by attorney-client or work product privilege.
But in March, ordered by a federal judge Mr. Corcoran’s recorded memories, now transcribed into dozens of pages, will be turned over to the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation into the documents.
Judge Beryl A. Howell’s decision trespassed on privilege that would normally have protected Corcoran’s musings about his interactions with Trump. Those protections were set aside under what’s known as the crime fraud exception, a provision that allows prosecutors to circumvent attorney-client privilege if they have reason to believe legal advice or services were used to further a crime.
Judge Howell, in a sealed memo accompanying her decision, made it clear that prosecutors believe Trump knowingly misled Corcoran about the location of the documents that would respond to the subpoena, according to a person familiar with the contents of the memo.
Mr. Corcoran’s notes, which have not previously been described in as much detail, will likely play a central role as Mr. Smith and his team move towards concluding their investigation and grapple with the question of bringing charges against the Mr. Trump. They could also show up as evidence in a courtroom if a criminal case is ultimately filed and goes to trial.
The level of detail in the recording is said to have angered and unnerved Trump’s close aides, who are concerned it contained direct quotes from sensitive conversations.
Corcoran, who was placed in Trump’s orbit by a political and legal adviser to the former president, Boris Epshteyn, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said in a statement that “the attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most fundamental tenets of our legal system” and accused the Justice Department of trying to deny Trump “this basic right. “
Mr. Cheung added that “whether the lawyers’ notes are detailed or not makes no difference, these notes reflect the legal opinions and thoughts of the lawyer, not the client.” And he maintained that Trump had tried to cooperate when Justice Department officials arrived at the property in June of last year.
In an early scene in his account, Mr. Corcoran describes meeting Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last spring to help him handle a subpoena that had just been issued by a federal grand jury in Washington seeking the return of all classified material in his presidential office’s possession, people familiar with the matter said.
After the pleasantries, according to a description of the recorded notes, Trump asked Corcoran if he had to comply with the subpoena. Mr. Corcoran told him yes.
That exchange could be useful to prosecutors as they gather evidence about whether Trump tried to obstruct the subpoena process and interfere with the administration’s broader efforts to recover all the confidential records he took with him from the White House.
But people close to Trump have said the conversation could be read more favorably as a client simply asking his lawyer how he should proceed.
The recording also describes how Mr. Corcoran conducted a search of a Mar-a-Lago storage room in an effort to comply with the subpoena’s request for documents, the people familiar with the account said. Mr. Corcoran told a grand jury in May that several resort employees had told him that everything he needed was kept in storage, located in the property’s basement, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Mr. Corcoran subsequently turned over to Justice Department officials more than three dozen documents he found in his search and drafted a letter to the department stating that a diligent search had turned up no more.
The notes on the recording do not suggest that Mr Corcoran was prevented from searching anywhere other than the storage room, the people familiar with them said. But they also indicate that no one at Mar-a-Lago, including Trump, spoke up to tell him that he should look elsewhere.
In the end, it turned out that the employees who directed Mr. Corcoran to the warehouse were wrong. In August, when FBI agents descended on Mar-a-Lago With a court-approved search warrant, they found classified documents not only in the Mar-a-Lago basement, but also in Trump’s office.
The problem of who moved the boxes in and out of the storage room —and why—has become one of the central parts of Mr. Smith’s research. Prosecutors have focused much of their attention on Walt Nauta, a Trump aide who was involved in moving boxes, and another Mar-a-Lago employee, Carlos Deoliveira, a maintenance worker who helped Nauta.
Mr. Smith’s team also focused on a related question: whether there was any attempt to interfere with the government attempts to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how documents were kept in the storage room and who had access to them. Mr. Corcoran’s notes provide some details about Mr. Nauta’s involvement in the search.
They say, for example, that Mr. Nauta opened the warehouse door for Mr. Corcoran, according to people familiar with them. They also say that Mr. Nauta brought Mr. Corcoran a tape so that he could seal the classified documents he found in a folder, in preparation for turning them over to prosecutors.
There is also a reference to Mr. Corcoran’s meeting with prosecutors, which took place in Mar-a-Lago on June 3 last year. He and another Trump attorney, Christina Bobb, met with Jay Bratt, head of the Justice Department’s national security division’s counterintelligence division, to hand over the documents they found and forward the letter claiming that, in To the extent of its possibilities, knowledge no longer remained at Mar-a-Lago.
The notes refer to Trump’s appearance in connection with Bratt’s visit, according to a person briefed on the contents of the notes.
Judge Howell’s memo requiring Corcoran to answer questions in front of a grand jury and produce his notes described the lawyer as a victim of Trump’s months of gambling with investigators and National Archives officials to return the documents, according to a person. familiar with the content of the note.
Like The New York Times reported In April, Judge Howell wrote in the memo, according to the person familiar with its contents, that Trump’s previous actions and the “misdirection” of efforts by archival officials to recover what turned out to be more than a dozen boxes records were a “dress rehearsal” for the May subpoena.
