A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered an attorney for Donald Trump to turn over documents to prosecutors in the investigation into the former president’s holding of classified documents at his Florida estate.

The order is reflected in a brief notice by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is sealed and none of the parties to the dispute have been identified by name.

But the details seem to line up with a behind-closed-door battle before a lower court judge over whether M. Evan Corcoran could be compelled to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the investigation of the Justice Department special counsel on whether Trump mishandled top secret information at Mar-a-Lago.

Last Friday, Beryl Howell, the outgoing chief judge of the US district court, instructed Corcoran to answer additional questions for the grand jury. He had appeared weeks earlier before the federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago case, but had invoked attorney-client privilege not to answer certain questions.

While the attorney-client privilege ensures that attorneys are not forced to share details of their conversations with clients for prosecutors, the Justice Department may

an exception to that

if it can convince a judge that a lawyer’s services have been used by a client in furtherance of a crime, a principle known in law as the crime-fraud exception.

Trump awaits grand jury as New York braces for protests

Howell ruled in favor of the Justice Department shortly before stepping down as chief justice, according to a person familiar with the case. That ruling was subsequently appealed, and court records show that the dispute before the federal appeals panel concerned an order issued last Friday by Howell.

The three-member panel that issued the decision consisted of Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Obama, and J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, both appointees of President Biden.

A Corcoran attorney did not immediately call back Wednesday seeking comment, and a Trump attorney declined to comment on the sealed warrant.

Corcoran is considered relevant to the investigation in part because he drafted a statement to the Justice Department last year claiming that classified documents had been diligently searched in Mar-a-Lago in response to a subpoena. Months later, however, FBI agents searched the house with a search warrant and found about 100 additional documents with secret markings.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Trump or anyone close to him obstructed his efforts to retrieve all classified documents, including top-secret material, from his home.