One of the most amazing things about Donald Trump’s classified documents scandal is how easy it would’ve been for him to avoid an indictment. The former president repeatedly received good advice from his lawyers, and if he’d followed their guidance, the whole mess would’ve gone away.
But Trump ignored them and is now confronting precarious consequences.
The latest evidence of his extraordinarily poor judgment comes by way of a new report from ABC News.
In May of last year, shortly after the Justice Department issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump for all classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump’s then-lead attorney on the matter, Evan Corcoran, warned the former president in person, at Mar-a-Lago, that not only did Trump have to fully comply with the subpoena, but that the FBI might search the estate if he didn’t, according to Corcoran’s audio notes following the conversation.
According to the report, portions of which have been confirmed by NBC News, Corcoran’s recollections were “captured in a series of voice memos he made on his phone” after speaking to his then-client.
Trump later said it was “shocking” to see the FBI execute a court-approved search warrant at his glorified country club, but there was nothing shocking about it: His own lawyer told him the FBI would show up at his door and search the premises, and a few months later, that’s precisely what happened.
Corcoran apparently made this quite simple for the former president. “[T]here’s a prospect that they could go to a judge and get a search warrant, and that they could arrive here,” Corcoran recalled warning Trump as they spoke at Mar-a-Lago.
What’s more, this isn’t the first such revelation from the broader scandal. Remember this Washington Post report from June?
One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department. The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.
The smart move for Trump would’ve been to reply, “That sounds great, let’s do that.” But he did not choose the smart course.
Instead, according to the Post’s report, the former president talked to others — most notably Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch — “who urged a more pugilistic approach.”
Trump, the article added, “was not interested” in Kise’s strategy.
The problem, of course, is that Kise’s strategy likely would’ve worked. We can say this with some certainty because, as we’ve discussed, federal prosecutors gave Trump a pass on the documents he took but gave back. If the former president had returned all of the materials he improperly took, and cooperated with law enforcement, it’s easy to believe this whole mess would’ve gone away.








