Lawyer Told Trump Defying Documents Subpoena Would Be a Crime

Not long after federal prosecutors issued a subpoena last year for all the classified documents that former President Donald J. Trump took with him from the White House to his estate in southern Florida, one of his lawyers told him, in no uncertain terms, that it would be a crime if he did not comply with the demand, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The lawyer, Jennifer Little, this year related the account of her discussion with Mr. Trump to a grand jury overseen by the special counsel Jack Smith. She is one of several witnesses who prosecutors were told had advised Mr. Trump to cooperate.

A few months after Ms. Little testified to the grand jury, Mr. Smith charged Mr. Trump with violating the subpoena for the documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to reclaim nearly three dozen classified documents that he removed from the White House.

As part of her grand jury appearance, Ms. Little told prosecutors that the former president clearly understood her warning, the person familiar with the matter said.

Her sworn testimony that Mr. Trump was aware that disregarding the subpoena would be a criminal offense could serve as significant evidence of his consciousness of guilt if she ends up being called as a witness when the case eventually goes in front of a jury.

The details of her testimony were reported earlier by ABC News.

The remarks by Ms. Little, who was already working for Mr. Trump in connection with a criminal investigation in Georgia and was brought in to help advise him on how to comply with the subpoena because she was one of the few people around him who knew the criminal justice system, were made during a critical meeting in the spring of 2022. At Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, she and another lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, advised the former president that he needed to obey the government’s demands that he return the classified material.