ABC News reports that former Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran's private notes about his interactions with the former president contain even more incriminating information than has been previously revealed.
Specifically, Corcoran said in recorded notes that Trump "privately expressed concerns that turning over potentially classified documents in his possession after a May 2022 subpoena could result in criminal charges," although it appears that his subsequent decision to allegedly evade the subpoena is what actually got him hit with criminal charges.
The fact that Trump knew he faced criminal prosecution for possessing the top-secret government documents could be used by prosecutors to establish his consciousness of guilt and would paint his efforts to allegedly confound government efforts to retrieve the documents in an even more incriminating light.
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In his notes, Corcoran said that Trump "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."
Trump would then say that it might be better to simply tell the government that there were no documents, which itself would be a crime given that there were still boxes full of classified documents still stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort at the time.
And in fact, writes ABC News, this is exactly one of the crimes that prosecutors have charged Trump with committing, as they said in a recent filing that he "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."
