Trump was warned about FBI’s ‘shocking’ raid on Mar-a-Lago months ahead of time: lawyer
Donald Trump was warned about a raid on Mar-a-Lago well ahead of time if he didn’t comply with a subpoena to turn over classified documents, according to audio notes taken by his lawyer.
Evan Corcoran, the then-lead attorney on the case, notified the former president in May 2022 of the possibility that the FBI could storm his Florida estate — shortly after the Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena ordering him to return all of the secret documents, ABC News reported Wednesday.
“The next step was to speak with the former president about complying with that subpoena,” Corcoran noted in a voice memo on his phone from May 12, 2022 when he and another attorney Jennifer Little flew to Florida to meet with Trump.
Corcoran recalled that while Trump waffled on during the meeting about Hillary Clinton and all the “great things” he’s done for the country, he and Little steered the conversation back to complying with the subpoena.
At the time, Trump had turned over 15 boxes of classified material from his Palm Beach abode — but the DOJ believed he was hanging onto even more.
“We’ve got a grand jury subpoena and the alternative is if you don’t comply with the grand jury subpoena you could be held in contempt,” Corcoran warned him.
Trump asked, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?”
“Well, there’s a prospect that they could go to a judge and get a search warrant, and that they could arrive here,” Corcoran replied.
The FBI executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022 — a move Trump decried at the time as a “shocking BREAK-IN” and “illegal Raid and Break-In.”
Since then, the recordings have emerged as the centerpiece of special counsel Jack Smith’s case accusing the former president of masterminding a criminal conspiracy to hide a trove of classified records from federal officials and his own lawyer, Corcoran.
Trump, 77, pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges related to his hoarding of boxes of documents he had removed from the White House after leaving office.
Corcoran, a Princeton alum, was hired by Trump in April 2022 — after the FBI launched a probe into his handling of classified records.
During the May 2022 meeting, Trump continued pushing back on his lawyers, according to the indictment, allegedly telling them: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes,” and, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”
Little allegedly told Corcoran that “there’s no way [Trump is] going to agree to anything, and that he was going to deny that there were any more boxes at all,” according to the voice memo transcripts.
In the end, Trump agreed to have Corcoran return to Mar-a-Lago two weeks later to search the property’s basement storage area for any classified documents.
The lawyer was assured that the subterranean storage space was the only place that contained classified records at Mar-a-Lago, with Trump allegedly telling him: “I’ve got boxes in my basement that I really wouldn’t want you to go through.”
Over the course of the next two weeks, according to the indictment, a pair of workers at Mar-a-Lago allegedly removed dozens of boxes from the storage room “at Trump’s direction.”
When Corcoran returned to search the storage room, he found only 38 documents and handed them over to the FBI, along with a certification assuring the feds that the ex-president had fully complied with the subpoena.
But when FBI agents descended on Trump’s estate in August, they discovered 102 more classified documents in boxes stashed throughout the property, including in a bathroom.
Asked to comment on Corcoran’s voice memos, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told ABC News, in part: “Whether attorneys’ notes are detailed or not makes no difference — these notes reflect the legal opinions and thoughts of the lawyer, not the client.”
Cheung also stressed that Trump “offered full cooperation with DOJ, and told the key DOJ official, in person, ‘Anything you need from us, just let us know.'”
The 45th president has now pleaded not guilty to a total of 91 state and federal charges across four different cases, ranging from hush money payments to election interference.
