Bernard Kerik, a close ally of former President Donald Trump and a key figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, has given thousands of documents to special counsel Jack Smith, his lawyer said Monday.
Kerik, a former New York police commissioner, worked closely with attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate unfounded claims of voter fraud after Trump lost the election to President Joe Biden. Smith’s team had subpoenaed Kerik for documents collected during the attempt to overturn the 2020 results, but the former commissioner had resisted those demands until the Trump campaign had reviewed the material for any privileged information.
“I have shared all of these documents, approximately 600 MB, mostly PDFs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about 2 weeks to discuss,” Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, told CNN and NBC News in a statement.
Smith is widely expected to be close to charging decisions in his ongoing probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol. Trump said earlier this month that the special counsel had informed him he is a target of that investigation, warning he could soon be indicted on federal charges for the second time in two months. Smith’s team has already leveled 37 criminal charges against the former president over his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.
Kerik wrote on Twitter later Monday that there was nothing “nefarious” going on and he had not turned on Trump or Giuliani.
“To clarify, I was subpoenaed several months ago and cooperated with that subpoena, giving the Special Counsel the documents that I could,” he wrote. “No one has flipped, no one is selling out Trump or Giuliani. This is about giving the Special Counsel the evidence that the legal team collected under the supervision of @RudyGiuliani, and was reviewing in the aftermath of the 2020 election relating to voter/election fraud, and improprieties in that election.”
Kerik is expected to meet with the special counsel’s office in August for a voluntary interview.
The former commissioner was pardoned by Trump in 2020 after serving four years in prison on felony charges of tax fraud and lying to White House officials.