There is no credible debate over John Eastman’s central role in trying to help Donald Trump overturn his 2020 defeat. The notorious Republican lawyer was a principal architect of the former president’s scheme, making Eastman a key target for Jan. 6 investigators.
As regular readers may recall, this has led to months of legal fights over Congress’ ability to subpoena the lawyer’s records, which Eastman has claimed are protected by attorney-client privilege. The bipartisan select committee has pushed back, arguing that communications between attorneys and clients are not protected if they’re discussing committing crimes.
In March, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter agreed, concluding, “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
As we’ve discussed, this was an extraordinary moment — there’s no modern precedent for a sitting federal court to conclude that a former president likely committed a felony — and it led to some additional disclosures. That said, the court ruling applied to a set of communications from a specific time period, and the larger legal fight over other Eastman’s emails is ongoing.
Indeed, as NBC News reported, that fight continues to go poorly — not only for the controversial lawyer, but also for the client he tried to help.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered lawyer John Eastman, a key figure in former President Donald Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election results, to turn over 33 new documents to the House Jan. 6 committee, including a number that the judge found are exempt from attorney-client privilege because they relate to a crime or an attempted crime.
The problem for Eastman is that his privilege claims simply aren’t working because of the judge finding a “crime-fraud exception”: The lawyer and his client were likely discussing plans to commit crimes, so their communications can’t be legally shielded.
As the NBC News report added, in yesterday’s instance, the judge concluded that Eastman, in one of the relevant email exchanges, said that Trump was aware that the number of voter fraud cases his team was alleging in a federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia was “inaccurate.” But, the judge said, Trump signed off on the suit, “swearing under oath” that the numbers were correct anyway.
The closer one looks at the details, the more brutal they appear. At issue is a written exchange from December 2020, when Team Trump prepared to use inflated fraud numbers as part of a Georgia lawsuit. Eastman raised “concerns” about including dubious data, adding that Trump had been “made aware” that some of the claims weren’t true.
Team Trump nevertheless proceeded. “Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint with the same inaccurate numbers without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing them,” wrote Carter, who added: “President Trump, moreover, signed a verification swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers ‘are true and correct’ or ‘believed to be true and correct’ to the best of his knowledge and belief.”
Ordinarily, someone in Trump’s position might claim at this point that he signed the materials in good faith, working under the assumption that he’d been given accurate information from those around him. But that won’t work in this instance: Trump was warned that the inflated data wasn’t accurate, and Trump and his team disregarded the truth. At a Jan. 6 committee hearing last week, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney reminded Americans, “Our nation’s federal judges are sworn to do impartial justice to preserve our Constitution and preserve our union. Dozens of these judges have been addressing January 6th cases, and many have given us plain, unmistakable warnings about the direction of our republic.” Six days later, a federal judge wrote, “The emails [Eastman has tried to hide] show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public. The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” As for what to expect as a result of such findings, my colleague Lisa Rubin explained late yesterday, all of this is likely to be “of great interest to at least two law enforcement investigations: those of the Justice Department and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. And the Fulton County folks should be especially interested given that in both categories of criminality — obstruction and conspiracy — the examples Judge Carter provided concern Georgia.” Update: Trump threw another online tantrum by way of his social media platform, lashing out at Carter this morning for yesterday’s ruling. In keeping with his usual messaging, the former president’s missive included, “[P]lease explain to this partisan hack that the Presidential Election of 2020 was Rigged and Stolen.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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