Trump lawyer told to hand over documents to prosecutors

A federal appeals court has ruled that a lawyer working for former US president Donald Trump had to give prosecutors documents related to his legal work for Mr Trump and to appear before a grand jury to answer its questions.

Supporters have protested against the possibility of Donald Trump being arrested over the Stormy Daniels scandal.

Mr Trump has previously tried to stop the lawyer, M Evan Corcoran, from handing over the documents, which are believed to relate to whether Mr Trump committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials he took after leaving the White House.

The row centres on who knew about the classified material still kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence and private club in Florida, after the government had demanded its return a year ago.

The New York Times said the search was focused on a document that Mr Corcoran drafted last spring stating that a “diligent search” had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago and that no further classified material remained there — an assertion that would be proved false.

This comes as, in a separate potential case against Mr Trump, a grand jury did not meet as expected on Wednesday to consider whether Mr Trump should be indicted over his alleged actions relating to a cover up of hush money paid to a porn star who claims to have had an affair with the former president years before he took office.

Any indictment can only happen if a grand jury that has been hearing evidence about the former president votes to charge him – although an expected meeting on Wednesday did not take place. The grand jury usually meets three afternoons a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Stormy Daniels claims that on the eve of the presidential election, in 2016, Mr Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, gave her $130,000 [£106,000] as a hush money payment to prevent her from talking about the night she spent with Mr Trump. The former president is now facing accusations of concealing the payment from the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L Bragg. It has been claimed Mr Trump reimbursed Mr Cohen for the payment and altered business documents to hide it – something which could be regarded as a breach of election law.