Trump’s lawyers will ask the judge in the case about secret documents to withhold evidence from the prosecution

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump’s lawyers will ask the judge presiding over his secret documents trial Tuesday to block prosecutors from using evidence seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate and recordings made by one of his former lawyers.

The arguments are the culmination of a three-day hearing in which prosecutors and defense attorneys argued over issues ranging from the legality of the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, whose team brought the case to court, to whether the former Republican president should be barred from making comments that could pose a threat to the safety of FBI agents involved in the investigation.

At issue Tuesday is a defense motion to suppress the boxes of records taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach during the FBI raid on Aug. 8, 2022. Defense attorneys claim the search warrant used to justify the search was misleading, in part because it did not include details of the Justice Department’s internal debate over whether searching the property was a reasonable step. They want a so-called Franks hearing to further prevent prosecutors from using evidence from the raid.

Prosecutors say the search warrant was not misleading in any way and that the judge who authorized the search relied on a “common sense determination that there was a reasonable suspicion that evidence of a crime would be found at the location to be searched.”

The lawyers will present their arguments in a closed hearing before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday morning. The arguments will be open to the public in the afternoon. Trump does not have to be present.

Trump is accused of dozens of felony counts for illegally hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing government efforts to get them back. He has pleaded not guilty.

Defense attorneys also question the prosecution’s use of evidence obtained from previous Trump lawyers, including voice recordings made by one of his former lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, to document his impressions of conversations with Trump about returning classified White House documents to Mar-a-Lago.

Defense attorneys are usually protected by attorney-client privilege and do not have to disclose details of their confidential conversations with their clients to prosecutors. However, prosecutors can circumvent this privilege if they can prove that an attorney’s legal services were used by a client in furtherance of a crime. This legal principle is known as the crime fraud doctrine.

The then-chief federal judge in the District of Columbia ordered last year that Corcoran produce the recordings to prosecutors and testify before a grand jury hearing evidence against Trump.

On Monday, Cannon expressed extreme skepticism about prosecutors’ request to make Trump’s release pending trial contingent on him avoiding comments that could pose a threat to law enforcement officials involved in the case.

Cannon’s handling of the case drew intense criticism. Her willingness to accommodate various requests from Trump’s team and her slow pace of sentencing contributed to a delay that made a trial before the presidential election in November virtually impossible.