FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump will on Tuesday ask the judge presiding over his secret documents case to prevent prosecutors from using evidence seized during an FBI investigation into his Florida estate and recordings made by one of his former lawyers.
The arguments are the culmination of a three-day hearing in which prosecutors and defense attorneys have discussed topics ranging from the legality of the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, whose team brought the case, to whether the Republican former president should be barred from participation in the case. making comments that could pose a risk to the safety of FBI agents involved in the investigation.
At issue Tuesday is a defense request to suppress the boxes of documents taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach during the Aug. 8, 2022 FBI search. Defense attorneys argue that the warrant used to justify the search was misleading, in part because it did not include details of the Justice Department’s internal debate over whether the search was an appropriate step. They want what is known in law as a Franks hearing to further argue against prosecutors being able to use evidence from the search.
Prosecutors say there was nothing misleading about the warrant application and that the judge who approved the search relied on a “common sense determination that there was probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found at the location to be searched.”
Attorneys will argue in a closed hearing Tuesday morning before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. The arguments will be public in the afternoon. Trump doesn’t need to be there.
Trump faces dozens of felony charges accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing government efforts to recover them. He has pleaded not guilty.
Defense attorneys also dispute prosecutors’ use of evidence obtained from previous Trump lawyers. That includes voice recordings that one of his former lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, made to document his impressions of conversations he had with Trump about returning classified White House documents to Mar-a-Lago.
Defense attorneys are normally protected by attorney-client privilege, so they do not have to share the details of their confidential conversations with clients with prosecutors. But prosecutors can avoid that privilege if they can prove that an attorney’s legal services were used by a client in furtherance of a crime, a legal principle known as the crime-fraud doctrine.
The then-chief federal judge in the District of Columbia last year ordered Corcoran to submit those recordings to prosecutors and testify before a grand jury hearing evidence against Trump.
On Monday, Cannon appeared deeply skeptical of a request by the prosecution to make it a condition of Trump’s pretrial freedom that he avoid comments that could pose a risk to law enforcement officials involved in the case.
Cannon’s handling of the case has received widespread attention, with her willingness to grant several motions by the Trump team and her plodding pace in issuing rulings contributing to a delay that has made a trial virtually impossible before November’s presidential election .
