Communications between adult-film star Stormy Daniels and an attorney who is now representing former President Donald Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Daniels’ lawyer told CNN.

The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from his defense of the former president in a case pertaining to Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to Daniels.

Daniels’ communications with Tacopina and others at his firm include details relating to Daniels’ situation, according to her current attorney Clark Brewster, who believes the communications show a disclosure of confidential information from Daniels.

Tacopina denies that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He says he neither met nor spoke to Daniels.

CNN has not seen the records in question. But legal ethics experts CNN spoke with said they could lead to limits being placed on the role Tacopina can play at trial or even his disqualification. The impact that the disclosure will have on the case will depend on the circumstances and the substance of the communications, the ethics experts said.

A core crime that the Manhattan District Attorney will likely include in an indictment of former President Donald Trump is “falsifying business records in the first degree,” a felony under New York State law (N.Y. Penal Code § 175.10). Prosecutors and indeed all of us are compelled by the rule of law to consider how such a charge compares to past prosecutions. Are like cases being treated alike?

Here it appears they are. Prosecution of falsifying business records in the first degree is commonplace and has been used by New York district attorneys’ offices to hold to account a breadth of criminal behavior from the more petty and simple to the more serious and highly organized. We reach this conclusion after surveying the past decade and a half of criminal cases across all the New York district attorneys’ offices.
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1638145615358992389

.....An individual is “guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree when, with intent to defraud, he:

makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise; or
alters, erases, obliterates, deletes, removes or destroys a true entry in the business records of an enterprise; or
omits to make a true entry in the business records of an enterprise in violation of a duty to do so which he knows to be imposed upon him by law or by the nature of his position; or
prevents the making of a true entry or causes the omission thereof in the business records of an enterprise.” N.Y. Penal Code § 175.05

An individual “is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” N.Y. Penal Code § 175.10.

Over the course of at least eight months of active investigation, the special grand jury heard testimony from some of Trump’s closest aides and advisers, often after Willis battled and won court decisions to compel their appearance. She indicated in January that charging decisions based on the special grand jury’s work were “imminent.”

But Findling argued that the entire process was defective and should be thrown out. The special grand jury itself should not have been treated as a “criminal“ proceeding, he said. He said comments made by special grand jurors to media, as well as by the presiding judge in the case, Robert McBurney, tainted any future criminal proceedings. And he said Willis should have been disqualified from the investigation months ago, after McBurney disqualified her from pursuing evidence about one particular state official.....

The complaints by Trump’s attorney echoed procedural complaints raised by witnesses throughout the months of the special grand jury’s probe.

State courts in New York, South Carolina, Florida and elsewhere all rejected claims that the special grand jury proceedings were “civil” in nature and that therefore out-of-state witnesses could not be compelled to appear. That led to appearances by Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Michael Flynn. And the Supreme Court similarly cleared the way for one key witness, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), to testify after he sought to challenge the special grand jury in federal court.

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.....

News of Mr. Barnes’s account came as validation to some of Mr. Carter’s remaining advisers. Gerald Rafshoon, who was his White House communications director, said any interference may have changed history. “If we had gotten the hostages home, we’d have won, I really believe that,” he said. “It’s pretty damn outrageous.”