Judge Rules Trump Lawyer Must Testify in Special Counsel Probe of Classified Documents Transcript

All right, Ken, I’m going to start with you. What have you confirmed?

Katie, a source briefed on the matter has told us that a federal judge ruled Friday night that the Justice Department established that Donald Trump committed crimes through his attorneys, such that, that judge ruled that the crime fraud exception to attorney-client privilege should be invoked and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran should be required to testify before the grand jury about conversations with his client, which is a deeply significant advance in this classified documents case.

(00:39)
Because one of the things that issue has been who caused a document to be given to the Justice Department that said that a diligent search had been made and all the classified documents had been turned over in June, which wasn’t true, because in August the FBI found more than a hundred classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. So the question was, did the lawyers do that on their own? Did Donald Trump tell them to do it? Well, now it appears that the Justice Department has established that there’s reason to believe that Donald Trump committed crimes in that process.

(01:10)
Now, the Trump team has appealed this ruling and it’s being litigated right now in the appeals court. And, of course, Katie, this is all secret. It’s all under seal. So we’re relying on sources who are seeing these documents, but that’s what they’re telling us, Katie.

And as I understand it, it’s being appealed and fought over between the DOJ and the special counsel and Donald Trump’s team on an expedited timeline. What can you tell us about that?

It’s really unusual. According to this docket that we’re looking at, that appears to correspond to the case, the judge required the DOJ to file something by 6:00 AM this morning, which is really accelerated, not a normal timeline, and we don’t know why that is. It’s a mystery, but it’s very unusual.