Trump Was Scared Of Catching Charges If He Returned Stolen Docs, Is That Consciousness Of Guilt?
Lawyer notes about 'he is trying to get us to do crime' may be inadmissible because Aileen Cannon confused about 'What is Crime-Fraud Exception?'
Hoo boy, we’re out here watching Special Counsel Jack Smith try to keep his classified documents case alive without hack Judge Aileen Cannon canceling it on behalf of her client Donald Trump. Meanwhile, ABC News is working like busy bees letting us know so much more we didn’t know about Smith’s case against Trump.
Yesterday, we discussed how Trump appears to have taken some kind of super-special secret agent mission to Mar-a-Lago the month before the FBI raided his home to retrieve the government secrets he stole. Why? Probably to rub his stinky little unqualified paws all over them, at the very least.
Today we’ll discuss how Trump has apparently shown consciousness of guilt in private, a sense that he knew that if he stopped running from the po-po and gave up all the docs he stole, he might be criminally culpable.
Which is a far cry from the way he stomp-waddled around his gilded bathrooms for months afterward demanding the return of “MY DOCUMENTS!”
ABC News reports:
Donald Trump privately expressed concerns that turning over potentially classified documents in his possession after a May 2022 subpoena could result in criminal charges while repeatedly engaging in what prosecutors have described as an effort to enlist his lawyers to lie and destroy documents for his benefit, according to transcripts of audio notes reviewed by ABC News.
You see, these are notes that Cannon might throw out as inadmissible, because she might be confused about how that whole “privileged” thing works when a person is in the process of committing crimes. (She is in so far over her head she can’t even see the surface.) These are notes from his lawyer at the time, Evan Corcoran.
Long quote, because it’s mostly just quoting Corcoran’s notes anyway:
Two months before agents searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's former lead attorney Evan Corcoran's notes — which prosecutors have used to bolster their case against the former president — describe that Trump repeatedly blamed his legal troubles on his "political enemies," was reluctant to allow the review of boxes that prosecutors say contained dozens of classified documents, and engaged in conduct that prosecutors believe was an effort to "corrupt" his attorneys by concealing Trump's alleged retention of classified documents.
"He raised a question as to, if we gave them additional documents now, would they, would they, the Department of Justice, come back and say well, why did you withhold them and try to use that as a basis for criminal liability or to make him look bad in the press," according to Corcoran's notes about what Trump asked his attorneys in May 2022 after prosecutors subpoenaed the former president to turn over any classified documents in his possession, records reviewed by ABC News say.
"Well look isn't it better if there are no documents?" Trump also asked his attorneys after raising concerns about prosecutors "opening up new fronts against him," according to Corcoran's notes.
See, isn’t it better if there are just no documents? That’s what Trump’s criminal brain was asking. (Like we guess if he hid the documents he had stolen and was concealing? Is that what he meant there?)
ABC News says Cannon, during a Thursday hearing, didn’t talk about Corcoran’s notes specifically, but that she did talk about “presumptively privileged material.” That’s why we’re worried about these getting thrown out.
Of course, the whole point here is that Trump was allegedly trying to get Corcoran to help him in furtherance of his crime — literally what the crime-fucking-fraud exception is referring to, Yer Honor — which is why they should not be considered privileged in any serious grown-up court of law in the land:
Prosecutors alleged in a recent court filing that Trump attempted to "enlist [Corcoran] in the corrupt endeavor" by suggesting he falsely tell the FBI that Trump did not have classified documents or that he hide or destroy them rather than turn them over.
"Trump tried to enlist his attorney in his criminal endeavor, tested his attorney's receptiveness, and then manipulated his attorney to achieve his criminal ends when the attorney did not accept his overtures," prosecutors wrote in a recent filing.
ABC News has so many more details.
For instance, a meeting on May 23, 2022, months before the raid, where Trump whined and whined that he was being RIGGED and STOLLEN and WITCH HUNTED, and that they were targeting him because he helped the country so much and “I built the wall.” (LMAO, he did not build the wall.) Corcoran tried to get him to focus on the subpoena, and cooperating with it. Wouldn’t it be better, Trump asked, “if we just told them we don't have anything here?”
After that meeting, Trump suggested that Evan Corcoran and another attorney Jennifer Little, who were both single, should go "take a walk along the beach" and that "maybe ... sparks will fly."
No word on whether he made a joke about whether there were SUBPENIS in Evan Corcoran’s pocket, but we’re going to guess no because he’s not clever or funny.
Instead of fucking each other on the beach, Little and Corcoran had this discussion:
[W]hile waiting poolside at Mar-a-Lago for their next meeting with Trump, Corcoran said Little warned — based on her conversation with two other Trump attorneys — that if they pushed Trump to comply with the subpoena, "he's just going to go ballistic," Corcoran noted.
Little added that "there's no way he's going to agree to anything and that, that he was going to deny that there were any more boxes at all," according to Corcoran's notes.
When they got back together later that day, according to Corcoran’s notes, Trump, again — demonstrating that part of his problem is that he has all these dementia delusions about imaginary things — “repeatedly recounted that a lawyer for Hillary Clinton ‘deleted all of her emails’ so ‘she didn't get into any trouble.’”
Sounds like he was upset none of his lawyers would be cool like Hillary Clinton’s lawyers. “He was great, he did a great job," said Trump, about that Hillary Clinton lawyer. (That is not what any Hillary Clinton lawyer did.)
ABC News concludes by reminding us that Jack Smith’s case essentially says that when Evan Corcoran refused to just be cool, that’s when Trump started using other means — and other aides, like his co-defendant Walt Nauta — to help hide his stolen classified docs from the feds.
We guess if Judge Aileen Cannon ends up not allowing any of this evidence against her client to be brought in his trial, we can just all read about it at the ABC News website.
We are silly.
[ABC News]
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One day, this will all be recognized as the worst security breach/treason in US history, but right now, it can be considered an on-going crime.
I don't think the public at large gets the importance of this. The cases of spying for other countries and handing over classified material that we've heard about before have sometimes been awful, and had terrible consequences, but they've been confined by the traitor's ability to access documents. Most of them have breached a single part of our government's secrets, because the seller/traitor/spy has only had access to what he/she works with.
But this traitor had access to every. single. aspect. of everything we hold most secret - lists of our agents in other countries, lists of other cooperating countries' agents, info that's so secret/obscure that revealing that we even had it would make it instantly clear who had gotten it, not to mention insider info about our nuclear capabilities, war capabilities, resources, you name it.
He's done incalculable damage even if all he did was keep the stuff in his sock drawer (which nobody believes he did, because he's on fucking tape showing at least one document to people without clearances). What other country will ever want to share info with us again? What does Putin, Xi, or the fascists/wannabe fascists in some of the European countries now know that they shouldn't?
And this case is so easy, so clearly winnable, that if it had gone to trial when it should have, under a judge instead of a fangirl, he'd be in prison, for life, already. This whole nightmare would be long over. Instead, it's entirely possible that he'll walk away free and clear because she grants the first defense motion to dismiss if the case ever even does start, and that's the ballgame, folks.