“Puzzle pieces” may reveal who allegedly blocked a classified-documents search of former President Donald Trump’s office, according to legal analyst Glenn Kirschner.
Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, said during the latest episode of his Justice Matters podcast on Tuesday that three different news stories likely reveal the name of the person who Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran claims blocked him from conducting a search of the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago office.
After Trump was subpoenaed over the documents by the Department of Justice (DOJ) last year, Corcoran incorrectly reported that the 38 documents he recovered from a storage area were the only classified items in the former president’s possession.
The Guardian reported on Tuesday that an unnamed person “steered” Corcoran away from searching Trump’s office, where the “most sensitive materials” were later found during the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid. Kirschner said that the reporting was the latest “puzzle piece” that points to the mysterious figure’s identity.
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“Pulling together the evidence in a criminal case really is a lot like assembling a puzzle,” Kirschner said. “No one piece of a puzzle ever shows you the entire picture. You don’t know what picture will emerge until you begin to assemble the puzzle.”
“Puzzle piece number one: One of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, was blocked—we don’t know by whom—from searching Donald Trump’s office for classified documents,” he added. “And that is where the FBI ended up finding some of the most highly sensitive classified documents.”
Kirschner said that “puzzle piece number two” came from former Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore, who alleged during a CNN interview this month that Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn had “attempted to interfere with” the search for documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“So puzzle piece number two was that Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn was interfering with other Trump lawyers, including specifically in the search for classified documents,” said Kirschner. “And Boris seemed like such a nice young man. … Not.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson told ABC News that Parlatore’s allegation about Epshteyn was “categorically false.”
Kirschner went on to further implicate Epshteyn while referencing a September 2022 article from The Independent as “puzzle piece number three.” The article says that Epshteyn’s phone was seized as part of the DOJ’s investigation of Trump’s role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Looks like a picture is emerging to me,” said Kirschner. “And it looks like old Boris might want to get himself a lawyer. You know, MAGA really does seem to stand for ‘make attorneys get attorneys.'”
“Will Boris end up a co-defendant with Donald Trump in a criminal indictment?” he continued. “Only time will tell. But if the evidence supports it, you bet he should be indicted.”
In response to a request for comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung emailed Newsweek a previously shared statement denouncing Kirschner as a “notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis” who “has been shunned by the legal community at large.”
Newsweek has reached out to Epshteyn via his website for comment.