Trump feared charges if he turned over classified docs he hid from his lawyers: sealed attorney notes

In August 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago — where they were looking for classified government documents being stored on the estate by former President Donald Trump. That investigation, in 2023, led to a criminal indictment from special counsel Jack Smith in one of the two Trump-related cases he is prosecuting.

ABC News journalists Katherine Faulders and Peter Charalambous, in an article published on June 25, report that according to audio notes, Trump, in 2022, "privately expressed concerns that turning over potentially classified documents could lead to criminal charges" — and did so while, prosecutors allege, encouraging his "lawyers to lie and destroy documents for his benefit."

"Prosecutors allege that rather than comply with the subpoena," Faulders and Charalambous report, "Trump opted to hide dozens of classified documents from his own lawyers. And federal agents eventually seized 102 classified documents — including 17 top-secret documents — after they executed a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022."

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The reporters add, "The notes, which ABC News first reported on last year, are at the center of an ongoing legal battle in the former president's federal classified documents case, where prosecutors have used the detailed notes about Trump's behavior and statements as key evidence to demonstrate that the former president attempted to obstruct justice by hiding documents from investigators."

Trump's defense attorneys, according to Faulders and Charalambous, have been hoping that Judge Aileen Cannon — the Trump-appointed federal judge assigned to the case — will grant their request to have those notes thrown out as evidence.

Former Trump Evan Corcoran, the journalists report, "made multiple audio recordings to memorialize his interactions with Trump" in 2022.

Trump, according to the notes, said, "I don't want anybody looking. I don't want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don't. I don't want you looking through my boxes. Look, I just don't want anybody going through these things."

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Read ABC News' full report at this link.