Secret court battle: Trump fighting to stop grand jury from talking to his "inner circle"

Secret court battle: Trump fighting to stop grand jury from talking to his "inner circle"

According to people familiar with the matter, former President Donald Trump's legal team is secretly fighting to prevent a federal grand jury from questioning a growing number of key Trump aides about their involvement in 2020 election fraud efforts.

The former president's most ferocious attempt to assert executive privilege

lawyer and client privilege and prevent some witnesses from testifying in the criminal investigation into the events of 6 January 2021 was the high-stakes legal battle, involving three Trump lawyers. In Washington, D.C., federal court on Thursday afternoon.

For Trump's post-presidency legal problems, the court's battle for privilege, unpublished and sealed, represents a turning point.

Depending on how the case is decided, prosecutors may or may not be able to break through Trump's wall about conversations he had with his legal counsel while working to rig the 2020 election and in the West Wing reports The Washington Post.

According to people briefed :

this problem arose when former White House counsel and lawyer Eric Hirschmann received a grand jury subpoena.

Former senior Trump White House staffers, such as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin, recently testified before the grand jury after agreeing on certain topics they would not discuss because of Trump's assertions of executive privilege.

Hershman does not appeal against the subpoena in court himself. 

Instead, Trump's legal team asks the judge to accept the former president's claims of privilege and the right to privacy in relation to his dealings. Hershman's grand jury testimony was postponed.

If prosecutors plan to use evidence in potential prosecutions against Trump or others, it remains unknown.

According to a previous CNN report, Trump's lawyers expected the Justice Department to eventually ask the court to order additional evidence from White House witnesses.

A request for comment from the Ministry of Justice was ignored.

• There are no public records available to reflect the status of

• the case because grand jury secrecy laws put the legal battle behind the seal.

• According to a recent CNN report

• the Justice Department has been preparing a judicial challenge in the same vein for months.

Besides Cipollone and Philbin, the former vice president's advisers, Greg Jacob and Mark Short, appeared before the grand jury in D.C. court, although they chose not to answer some queries because of Trump's assertions of executive privilege, according to a previous CNN story.

Evan Corcoran, Tim Parlatore and John Rowley

who collectively defended Trump in the January 6 investigation, left the courtroom on Thursday with a law clerk.

Parlatore told the media that there was a "client", but did not provide any further information. Other lawyers choose not to respond.

The people briefed on the situation stated that Trump's legal team's desire for widespread privilege was disputed by her lawyers over legal strategy.