(CN) — A federal judge denied a motion from news organizations hoping to learn how the Department of Justice obtained detailed accounts of former President Donald Trump’s discussions with his attorneys.
Chief U.S. District Chief James Boasberg said in an order Friday he could not release, or even acknowledge, that judicial records existed detailing the fight to compel testimony from Trump’s former attorneys.
The Barack Obama appointee cited grand jury secrecy as the reason: “While the court appreciates the press’s diligent efforts to inform the public of the details surrounding these newsworthy events, it is constrained to neither confirm nor deny the existence of the records the press seeks at this time.”
Attorneys for CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post filed the request in June for the Washington federal court to release judicial records that concerned claims of attorney-client privilege during the grand jury investigation into the former president’s mishandling of classified documents.
The application came after several news outlets reported that the federal judge overseeing the grand jury investigation had ordered Trump’s attorney, Evan Corcoran, to testify about his conversations with the former president.
Corcoran had claimed attorney-client privilege, according to the reports, but the judge invoked a crime-fraud exception, which allows federal prosecutors to challenge the privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or services had been used to further a crime.
The June 8 indictment against Trump appeared to confirm the reporting. Charging documents summarized Trump’s conversations with his attorneys, as recounted by “Attorney 1,” as well as a scheme to have his attorneys lie about the classified documents he kept at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.
Since the indictment was unsealed, the news organizations argued, the public was entitled to judicial records pertaining to the attorney-client privilege issue.
Boasberg disagreed.
The judge said such records can be unsealed only if doing so would not threaten to disclose matters occurring before the grand jury, including the identity of those who testified before the secret body.
Judges have unsealed similar records when a person has publicly identified themselves as a grand jury witness, Boasberg wrote. The records may also be released if once-protected information is revealed at a judicial or government proceeding.
News reports have claimed Corcoran was the attorney forced to testify against his client. Journalists relied on sources not publicly identified for the information. Neither federal prosecutors nor Corcoran have confirmed the claims.
Therefore, the press’s arguments that the information is already public is simply an inference based on a close reading of the indictment, the judge ruled.
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