Former Trump attorney John Eastman’s phone was seized by the FBI last week, a new lawsuit from Eastman revealed.
Eastman filed his lawsuit in federal court in New Mexico. Eastman’s lawyer, Charles Burnham, wrote that six federal investigators approached Eastman in the state as he left a restaurant where he had dinner with his wife and a friend.
Burnham wrote that federal agents identified themselves as FBI agents, but “appeared to be executing a warrant issued at the behest of the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General.”
The warrant, which was included in the filing, indicated that any electronic devices seized would be sent to Washington, D.C. or the Justice Department inspector general’s forensic lab in northern Virginia. Monday’s 13-page filing claims that agents “forced” Eastman to provide biometric data, such as fingerprints, needed to unlock his phone.
Eastman is asking a federal judge to order the DOJ to return his phone, eliminate records it obtained and to block investigators’ access to it.
The search and seizure of Eastman’s phone would have occurred the same day investigators searched the Virginia home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who, at the behest of former President Trump, attempted to weaponize the department as a tool to interfere with the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Shortly after news broke of feds seizing Eastman’s phone, former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich tweeted that the DOJ IG would have jurisdiction to investigate current and former employees.
Eastman played a key role in former President Trump’s unsuccessful election steal scheme. Eastman pressured then-Vice Mike Pence to toss out the results of the 2020 election. Last March, a federal judge found that Eastman and Trump “likely” committed a criminal conspiracy to subvert the election results on Jan. 6.
