Lordy, There Are [Transcribed] Tapes

ABC News reports that among the things Beryl Howell ordered Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, to turn over were “transcriptions of personal audio recordings” involving his representation of Donald Trump.

Sources added that Howell also ordered Corcoran to hand over a number of records tied to what Howell described as Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme,” echoing prosecutors. Those records include handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.

It also reported that Howell ordered Jennifer Little, an Atlanta attorney who signed a big challenge to Fani Willis’ investigation into Trump’s attempts to cheat in Georgia, to testify further as well.

Sources told ABC News that Howell ordered Little’s testimony as well, with the exception of one of the topics for which she sought to assert attorney-client privilege.

CNN reports that Trump is appealing this decision.

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85 replies
  1. pdaly says:

    This decision came out on Friday, and Roger Stone states he and Trump “prayed” on the phone together on Sunday.

    The lawyer Little was one of 3 lawyers to sign the petition in Georgia court on Trump’s behalf, but the other 2 are not, reportedly, ordered by the judge to testify. Little works for herself and not with the other two. Does this imply Little has exposure on something other than the Georgia petition?

    • rip no longer says:

      If Stone and Trump were involved, the “praying on the phone” would more likely be “preying on the chumps on the other end of the phone.”

    • Vinnie Gambone says:

      Surely Snot Rag Rodger Stone follows every bit of all Trump news as closely as Marcy and EW team, right? Yet we hear nothing from him.

      I, with zero basis, think he and Trump speak regularly, if not daily.

      Alex Jones and other provatuers have peeled off, contemplating next moves in a life after Trump. Hoping someone at some point reports (rats) that Snot Rag Rodger is running out of Rats to fuck, and money.
      Soon enough, one hopes, the cast of characters in the Willard war room will be investigated and indicted. Then , and only then, will i be happy.

  2. BobBobCon says:

    To clarify, when the article says “hand over” does that mean to the court which will furrther consider issues, or hand over to prosecutors?

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Unless there’s a special master or the court has explicitly chosen to review material in camera, it means deliver to the prosecution.

      • BobBobCon says:

        Thanks. That plus Harpie’s comment below about the very tight deadlines suggest the timeline isn’t going to get dragged out, although I realize more wrinkles could arise. Hopefully not.

  3. David F. Snyder says:

    The dickhead looks mighty haggard in that photo ABC has up. I presume he appeals Judge Howell’s decision. Hopefully those tapes provide the higher standard of evidence needed to charge and convict.

  4. P J Evans says:

    I suspect the tapes were made to protect Corcoran, because he’d know the stories about the lawyers who worked in pairs.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Any lawyer who sought work from Trump might believe in him, the patrons behind him, the causes he professes to espouse, or the notoriety from representing him. They would not do it because they believed in the truth of his statements. He has long professed to believe in lying and that lying in any environment that carries no immediate legal consequences is A-OK. He seems to have moved on to lying even where there are because it’s all he knows.

  5. harpie says:

    https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1638344479101923329
    8:58 PM · Mar 21, 2023

    NEWS: An appeals court panel has temporarily blocked Judge Howell’s “crime-fraud” order against Trump attorney Evan Corcoran but set a series of rapid deadlines — including at midnight tonight and 6am tomorrow — to resolve the matter.

    MORE: The order makes clear documents are at issue — and the extraordinary light-speed with which the appeals court is moving suggests there will be action on this at the federal courthouse *tomorrow.*

    The appeals court panel dealing with the issue: Cornelia Pillard (Obama), Michelle Childs (Biden) and Florence Pan (Biden).

    It’s the inverse of last month’s appeals panel that heard the Scott Perry case: Rao (Trump), Katsas (Trump), Henderson (Bush I).

    In layman’s terms 1/2

    -Judge Howell ruled Friday that Evan Corcoran’s comms with Trump likely reveal evidence of a crime — invalidating attorney-client privilege.

    -Appeals court agreed to *very* briefly block Howell’s order to consider emergency appeal.

    At midnight, Trump side must detail documents at issue
    -At 6 AM, Jack Smith team must reply

    Three-judge panel will likely rule quickly, given extraordinary urgency of timeline.
    2/2 [LINK]

    Trump denounces ‘crime-fraud’ ruling forcing attorney to testify in documents probe The ruling by the federal District Court in D.C. came as its chief judge wound up her term supervising the grand jury. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/21/trump-crime-fraud-attorney-documents-probe-00088215 JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY 03/21/2023 08:58 PM EDT

  6. waban1966 says:

    Question for the criminal law experts out there:

    No doubt Trump will challenge any state and federal indictments claiming “selective prosecution” (discussed this morning in NYT classic “both-sides” fashion). Since Trump’s primary tactic is delay, not successful motions, what is the court procedure for a selective-prosecution argument? Does Trump have to make that argument within the criminal case (likely to be faster) or does he file a separate lawsuit (slower). Can he file a federal case to claim unconstitutional selective prosecution of the state-court lawsuit (it’s a long time since I studied the civil-rights abstention doctrines)? Can he seek mandamus from the DC Circuit regarding any Jack Smith indictment? Mike Flynn (represented by Sydney Powell) got Judge Naomi Rao to aggressively issue mandamus, albeit regarding a dismissal by the government. Is there a right to an immediate appeal, like qualified immunity? I recognize that Trump may file a lawsuit even if that’s wrong, like he did seeking the special master in Florida. And make attempts at discretionary appeals. But that case got resolved faster than a conventional civil suit because the 11th Circuit said it was the wrong procedure.

    • waban1966 says:

      And could Trump seek mandamus directly from the DC Circuit? Mike Flynn, represented by Sydney Powell, got Judge Naomi Rao to aggressively issue mandamus, albeit with government support. It might be even easier on that reasoning to issue mandamus to the district court.

  7. biff murphy says:

    “Roger Stone states he and Trump “prayed” on the phone together on Sunday”

    Religion is all-too-often a refuge for scoundrels.
    Neal Boortz

  8. Amicus says:

    Transcripts but not tapes. So close, so close. Or are there tapes as well?

    Nixon tried to avoid the production of his tapes by generating his own transcripts. Not surprisingly, those transcripts were remarkably inaccurate compared to what was on the tapes. And fortunately for the interests of justice, some of the tapes were out there an in the hands of Judge Sirica and the Watergate committee. The Watergate committee went to rather extraordinary lengths to produce the highest quality transcripts because the tape recordings had poor audio quality.

    Still and all, transcripts, especially if they were contemporaneous transcripts are not to be sneezed at.

    We don’t know whether the transcripts at issue will stand up to challenge, nor obviously the specifics of what they say. But yes, “lordy” is the correct response.

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        Indeed, harpie, much depends on the transcriber. Having done a little of this, I can testify that it’s much more of an art than it seems; you must make interpretive decisions with every utterance. I once did a couple of layperson’s translations from 17th century French into English; these required a dictionary (my modern French was rustier than I thought!), some research, and a lot of creative latitude to bridge the centuries, but most people *don’t* read 17th century French. I was counting on that too.

        Transcribing audio is different. You have the power to render eloquent those who struggle to articulate a thought intelligibly, and conversely to suggest that eloquent folks stammer and stumble. When the actual audio isn’t public, that’s an awesome responsibility.

        P.S. bmaz, please don’t hassle me about all the stuff I’ve done. I’ve just done a lot of different stuff, on purpose, mainly because (aside from having to support myself starting when I was a teenager) I’m curious about the work other people do, but also because I am by profession a fiction writer. We succeed best when we know something about our subjects and our characters’ lives; doing all this stuff (as well as I could, but sometimes badly) was the best choice I made as a young person.

        If you offer me a weird job, I will take it.

        • theartistvvv says:

          That an interesting approach, somewhat analogous, mebbe, to method acting.

          For creative (and other) reasons I wanted to understand, from the inside, addiction.

          I stopped at cigarettes, but it took years to finally quit.

        • Ginevra diBenci says:

          My mom was a very successful actress, like many others of her generation trained in “method” terms at Northwestern’s Drama School. I kind of adapted her method to my writing–although I wouldn’t have recognized I was doing that at the time.

          And I too started smoking for “creative” reasons. I was writing a novel where all the main characters smoked, so at age 37 I picked up a pack of Camel Filters. Haven’t been able to quit.

        • theartistvvv says:

          I have quit many times, and now it’s been about 18 years. FWIW, I had two approaches:
          1. change what you are doing to avoid things that you are used to smoking during (like, avoid certain taverns, or walk after a meal instead);
          2. suck it up and change nothing, but make it a point of pride (some might call it “mindful”?).

          The latter has worked the best for me, or at least it’s the last approach I hadda take.

          Altho’ my buddy wore at least two patches atta time for a cuppla months and quit his 3 pack a day habit (mine was only 1).

  9. WilliamOckham says:

    It appears to me that the appeals court is making a statement with scheduling. Look at what happened between close of business yesterday and opening for business today.
    5:23 Trump files a motion to vacate and for a stay.
    8:14 Appeals panel gives Trump until midnight to provide a list of all the documents at issue. And they give the government until 6am to respond to Trump’s motions.
    12:26 Trump files 8 pages (presumably the list of documents).
    5:36 Govt files its response.

    That’s a lot of late night lawyering

    • Molly Pitcher says:

      Andrew Weisman just said on MSNBC, that he felt the extremely tight timeline was possibly becasue there was an issue of national security involved.

        • Belynsky says:

          So predictable.

          [How are you helping matters by piling on and cluttering this thread? Your second comment is going into the bin. Take a seat until you can add something constructive to the thread. /~Rayne]

        • WilliamOckham says:

          Not the exact words I would have used and also not wrong. There are at least a half dozen reasons why the national security theory is unlikely. Weismann would be better served to say “I don’t know” when asked. Far more likely in my view is that the appellate levels of the federal judiciary are starting to see Trump’s attack on the judicial system for what it is: One more front in his ongoing coup attempt. And they are slowing reducing his ability to delay the inevitable.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Or the abundant soundness of the prosecution’s case and the patent absurdity of Trump’s. Who knows?

    • c-i-v-i-l says:

      Hugo Lowell of The Guardian tweeted “Hearing that Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran was given a Wednesday deadline by chief US judge Howell to produce notes in the Mar-a-Lago docs investigation — which could explain why DC Circuit Court set tight deadlines: they wanted to consider appeal before deadlines took effect.” From the case docket (h/t Konny_2022), it looks to me like Howell’s order was temporarily stayed, but the panel rejected Trump’s request for a stay and dissolved their own administrative stay this afternoon. IANAL and don’t know if that sufficiently explains the tight deadlines.

    • Troutwaxer says:

      Just so bmaz can enjoy his lunch… IT’S NOT RICO UNTIL KEN WHITE SAYS IT’S RICO!!

      [FYI – your duplicate comment published a minute earlier has been deleted. /~Rayne]

    • Matt___B says:

      Surely you’re referring to RICO, maker of fine clarinet and saxophone reeds?

      https ://www .sweetwater. com/c1270–Reeds_Saxophone?highlight=RIAS2&mrkgadid=&mrkgcl=28&mrkgen=gpla&mrkgbflag=1&mrkgcat=drums&percussion&acctid=21700000001645388&dskeywordid=92700073013174237&lid=92700073013174237&ds_s_kwgid=58700007963105273&ds_s_inventory_feed_id=97700000007215323&dsproductgroupid=1747729299761&product_id=RIAS2&prodctry=US&prodlang=en&channel=online&storeid=&device=c&network=u&matchtype=&adpos=largenumber&locationid=9030970&creative=615094225364&targetid=pla-1747729299761&campaignid=17968563287&awsearchcpc=&&&gclid=CjwKCAjwzuqgBhAcEiwAdj5dRm8eU0yv7e1TGq70oFIJ6eAQrIo2-LyJ3MdBjRSJNE0Qx_yT35x6IhoC_8QQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

      [FYI – I am deactivating the link above with some blank spaces because there’s tracking in the link and I can’t tell where it begins/ends in relation to other necessary content in the link. Community members wishing to visit that site can copy-and-paste, remove the blank spaces to visit the site but they do so at their own risk. /~Rayne]

    • bmaz says:

      Fani Willis is self promoting politically motivated garbage. And she announced that very long ago.

  10. harpie says:

    https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1638623886630592526
    3:29 PM · Mar 22, 2023

    In apparent victory for special counsel Jack Smith, the DC Circuit has rejected what appears to be the appeal of Judge Howell’s order that Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran produce notes of his discussions with Trump re MAL docs. [screenshot]

    A clerk’s order popped up. Something else remains unresolved on appeal from Howell’s decisions last week — it must have been a complicated mix of things — and is moving much more slowly: the DC Circuit won’t decide it, whatever it is, until May. [screenshot]

    • harpie says:

      NEW: Significant win for special counsel Jack SMITH.
      Appeals court panel rejects bid by Trump team to prevent Smith from accessing attorney-client privileged docs that a lower-court judge ruled contained likely evidence of a crime. w/ @joshgerstein

      It’s unclear at the moment if Trump will seek Supreme Court review, but he may not have much time to make that decision. Last time the same sequence of events played out, Marc Short testified the next day. [link]

      MORE: Trump had treaded carefully around Judge Howell for the last year as she presided over grand jury matters that could determine his criminal fate. But his team launched its first attack on her as soon as she ceded the chief’s gavel to another judge.

      Links to: Court rejects Trump’s urgent bid to keep lawyer’s records from special counsel The ruling effectively permits the Justice Department to circumvent Trump’s attorney-client privilege after a lower-court judge found that the documents likely contain evidence of a crime.
      https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/22/trump-court-rejects-special-counsel-00088403 GERSTEIN / CHENEY 03/22/2023 04:13 PM; Updated: 03/22/2023 04:49 PM

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        harpie, thank you for this update! I was looking for it in the Big Name Papers and seeing nothing. You are the best!

        • rip no longer says:

          Drink, drank, drunk.
          Think, thank, thunk.

          Gotta love this bastard of a language with lots of parents whose own voices are not heard any longer.

        • LizzyMom says:

          Blame it on the Germanic origins of English. Those irregular verbs are related to the modern German verbs “liegen” and “legen”…

        • P J Evans says:

          Yeah, and then there are the really weird ones the became “may/might” and “can/could”.

        • Epicurus says:

          You will love it even more with this book. Not my review but accurate.

          “In Words and Rules, Steven Pinker explores profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple phenomenon — regular and irregular verbs — and examining it from every angle. With humor and verve, he covers an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities, from the history of languages to how to simulate languages on computers to major ideas in the history of Western philosophy.

          Through it all, Pinker presents a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. The idea extends beyond language and offers insight into the very nature of the human mind.”

          If anyone were going to do any serious Shakespeare reading, S/he ought read this book first.

        • Sue 'em Queequeg says:

          I believe so. Like so many old Anglo-Saxon words, it sounds slightly wrong even when it’s right.

          While I’m here, let me echo the many well-deserved words of thanks to you, Harpie, and to Brandi. An honor to read your work.

  11. waban1966 says:

    Has there been any reporting (leaks from the Trump side) about who the lawyers are representing Trump in these privilege fights coming out of the grand juries? The sealed case DC circuit docket doesn’t even list the lawyers.

    Curious to know who would have put their name on this, given how bad it sounds. And we likely will never know who is ghost-writing all the appeal papers, although maybe Kise if he isn’t actually appearing on the papers?

  12. StillHopeful says:

    IANAL so ……..

    4 (so it seems) active investigations in TFG corruption: hush payment, Georgia election overturning, coup attempt, and hiding/stealing classified materials.

    If I could prioritize things, I would hope that the DOJ goes after the lowest hanging fruit first. (I know that there are different sets of authorities, states vs fed, etc).

    Stealing state secrets is indefensible. Who would say that is OK? (Who cares about Pence, or Biden; I can’t plead that it was OK for me to rob a store because that other guy on the other side of town did).

    Please try him for the secrets (that keeps him from holding the office he wants); then…….keep going after other corruptions.

      • StillHopeful says:

        Yes,

        I was in the Navy way back when.

        One day, I had access to a lot of highly classified documents. The day my time in service ended I had no access.

        TFG lost his clearance to access classified material at some point after 1/20/2021.

        On the surface, pretty clear he broke some laws. Hope the wheels of justice grind away, making life for these guys unbearable.

  13. Frank Probst says:

    My head is spinning. The insanely-rapid turnaround times are all related to Evan Corcoran, right? Is it possible that he’s flipped and is just covering his ass by getting the court to rule that he MUST turn over the materials? I understand that this is allowed through the crime/fraud exception, but could Corcoran be pushing this to avoid being sued by Trump? Or would this kind of thing not happen in these kinds of cases? I don’t understand what the hell is going on here.

  14. Willis Warren says:

    it’s not just Andrew Weismann that is an assclown, BM. It’s anyone who’s on tv. Popularity makes you weird. Weismann seems like he’s gone all in on cable news persona and that’s a terrible thing.

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