Former NYPD Boss Bernie Kerik gave Trump Records to Jack Smith

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Bernie Kerik, the former NYPD commissioner who collected evidence of alleged election fraud for the 2020 Trump campaign, has cut a deal to turn over records to Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of the investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

Smith had previously sought the documents, which related to Keriks’ role as former presidents in the area investigating what were later disproved conspiracy theories about ballot stuffing and voter fraud. However, Kerik’s legal team refused to turn over those documents, citing attorney-client privilege stemming from the fact that Kerik was working on behalf of Trumps lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

But on Friday, Trump himself waived that privilege and agreed to turn over the documents, according to Keriks’ defense attorney, Timothy Parlatore.

Smith is now expected to receive nearly 2,000 pages of material describing how Kerik viewed the fraud allegations. The records could prove crucial for federal prosecutors, who are looking for evidence of Trump’s decision-making process as he relentlessly made baseless accusations that the 2020 election was rigged, even after top advisers told him so.

For months, the DOJ special counsel has been investigating Trumps many ways to stay in the White House after losing that election, which resulted in a violent attack by his MAGA loyalists on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This past week, Trump revealed that investigators had sent him a so-called target letter indicating that he was about to be indicted.

While the former president has spent hours in recent weeks posting screeds directed at Smith calling him crazy for seeking a possible indictment, lawyers have so far battled prosecutors over evidence behind closed doors.

Trump’s decision to greenlight these records represents something of a gamble. But Parlatore said the evidence could actually prove exculpatory, because it shows the Trump campaign actually heard the allegations of fraud and engaged in what could be argued was a well-intentioned attempt to investigate the claims by interviewing witnesses.

Interestingly, none of these efforts resulted in any actual proof, which is why Trump’s lawsuits challenging the election results ultimately went nowhere. Federal judges across the country have thrown them out and even reprimanded lawyers for filing empty claims. Giuliani and his privately run investigation have played a key role in spreading conspiracy theories, and his involvement could get him into trouble in Georgia.

The Jan. 6 House Committee, which spent more than a year investigating Trumps attempted coup and produced a sweeping final report documenting how close the country came to jeopardizing its functioning democracy, interviewed Kerik during its investigation. However, congressional investigators have received only a portion of the documents in question, as that attorney-client privilege is still in place.

From the time he received the subpoena from the Committee on January 6, Mr. Kerik said full disclosure is the best policy so the public can understand the extent of legal teams’ efforts to investigate election fraud, Parlatore told The Daily Beast on Monday.

The formal agreement to waive privilege over the documents in question was indicated in a court filing Monday afternoon in a case involving Georgia poll workers who say their lives were ruined when Giuliani falsely accused them of mishandling ballots. Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation in 2021 and requested similar records as part of their lawsuit. But Giuliani and his hired investigator, Kerik, refused to turn them over for the same reason they withheld them from Smith, citing the Trump campaign’s attorney-client privilege.

Beryl A. Howell of the US District has already sanctioned Giuliani, ordering him to pay $89,172 in attorney fees for wasting time. And he was willing to do the same to Kerik. But Kerik’s defense attorney, Parlatore, cut a last-minute deal with Trump’s legal team to make those documents available to Freeman and Moss. That deal, in turn, also makes them available to Smith investigators.

On Monday, the women’s lawyers alerted the judge that they had reached a settlement and began receiving a batch of documents on Sunday. Kerik also agreed to sit down and answer questions from lawyers over the next month, which could also benefit Smith’s investigation.

The sudden turnaround also means Kerik has agreed to sit down with the feds for a formal interview in mid-August, Kerik said.

That timing could indicate that Smith is not as close to prosecuting Trump as the former president recently suggested, but Smith could also conduct the interview with Kerik after an indictment. Investigators typically complete interviews and collect a full picture of evidence before asking a grand jury to vote on criminal charges, but Smith could always make an exception if he really intended to closely monitor Trump over his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election.

Parlatore was uniquely positioned to make the deal to return these documents. He was on Trump’s legal defense team handling various special counsel investigations until he left in May.

Kerik also has his own connection to Trump. Following the United States’ invasion of Iraq, the former NYPD boss briefly served as a top minister in Iraq’s transitional government. His nomination to head the newly created Department of Homeland Security collapsed, as investigators began to uncover a long history of corruption. He received a four-year prison sentence for tax fraud and lying to White House officials. But years later, he became a conservative Fox News commentator and in 2020 was granted clemency by former President Trump.

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