The lawyers representing former President Donald Trump — John Rowley, James Trusty and Lindsey Halligan — were at the Justice Department around 10 a.m. Monday, weeks after Trump’s lawyers had requested a meeting with top federal law enforcement officials.
CBS News saw Trump’s legal team entering the Justice Department. They didn’t speak when they entered the Washington building and stayed just under two hours. A person familiar with the meeting between Trump’s lawyers and the department said Attorney General Merrick Garland did not attend.
Two people familiar with the investigation said Trump’s legal team is frustrated with the way Justice Department officials have handled attorney-client matters in recent months and would likely raise concerns on that front during Monday’s meeting, in particular, prosecutors’ discussions of related issues before the grand jury.
Earlier this year, a federal judge said Trump’s lawyer must testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, investigating the former president’s withholding of classified documents.
The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, previously declined to answer questions from investigators about his conversations with Trump, citing concerns about attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors in the special counsel’s office wanted to question Corcoran about an alleged phone call he had with Trump on June 24, 2022, when investigators were seeking documents at Trump’s home and surveillance tapes from Mar-a -Lago, a source previously. he told CBS News last week.
The special counsel’s team asked D.C. Chief District Judge Beryl Howell to reject Corcoran’s privilege claims and compel him to testify against his client, Trump, on the grounds that the communications between the lawyer and client in question could have facilitated the criminal activity. Howell’s secret order only partially granted that request and ruled that the so-called “felony-fraud exception” will apply to Corcoran’s testimony on a specific set of questions, the sources said.
An appeals court rejected the former president’s request to end Corcoran’s testimony, and upheld Howell’s sentence. Howell was replaced as chief judge in D.C. federal court by Judge James Boasberg, who ruled earlier this year that former Vice President Mike Pence must testify before a grand jury in the special counsel’s second investigation into Trump focused on efforts to nullify the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Special counsel Jack Smith has been investigating the former president after classified documents from his tenure in the White House were discovered in August 2022 at Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors are also looking into whether there were efforts to obstruct attempts to retrieve the records, according to multiple sources close to the investigation.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation believe a charging decision in the documents case is imminent, and Trump’s lawyers were expected in recent days to meet at some point with the Justice Department to discuss where are things and possibly express their concerns about the prosecution’s efforts so far.
Grand jury testimony has slowed in recent weeks, sources said, indicating the investigation may be coming to an end. Numerous former White House aides and Mar-a-Lago employees, from security officers and valets, have been called to testify in secret proceedings in Washington, DC.
The special counsel has gathered evidence that Trump’s staff moved boxes the day before a visit by the FBI and a federal prosecutor to Mar-a-Lago in June 2022, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News. the matter This was first reported by The Washington Post.
Trump’s lawyers, Rowley and Trusty, had written a letter in May complaining that their client was being treated “unfairly” and asking him to “discuss the injustice being perpetrated by his special counsel and prosecutors.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office declined to comment.
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