Michael Kosnar is a Justice Department producer for the NBC News Washington Bureau.
Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.
Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.
WASHINGTON — Special Counsel Jack Smith's office presented sufficient evidence to establish that former President Donald Trump committed a crime through his attorneys, a U.S. district judge ruled Friday night, a source briefed on the proceedings confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wasn't ruling on whether Trump was guilty of a crime, but making a decision about whether his attorney could be compelled to testify.
As a result of the decision, Howell ruled in favor of applying the “crime fraud” exception to Trump’s attorney-client privilege and ordered Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to testify before the federal grand jury.
Trump's legal team has appealed the ruling, the source said.
The development was first reported by ABC News.
Since that decision on Friday, the appeals court stayed the ruling, and both sides have filed briefs to the appeals court on an accelerated schedule, according to a sealed docket that appears to correspond to the case.
The Department of Justice declined to comment, and Corcoran did not respond to NBC's requests for comment.
NBC News has reported that Corcoran instructed another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, to sign a written statement in June asserting to Justice Department officials that a diligent search for classified documents had turned up no additional material. That was in response to a grand jury subpoena. The assertion, however, was not true, as the FBI discovered in August when it found around 100 classified documents in its search of Mar-a-largo.
