A federal judge rejected ex-Trump legal adviser John Eastman’s attempt to quash the House Jan. 6 select committee’s subpoena to Chapman University requesting his work emails from when he was a law professor at the school — where he worked as he was trying to help then-President Donald Trump steal the 2020 election.
Per Yahoo News, Judge David Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ordered Eastman to wade through the more than 19,000 emails related to his work with Trump on his school account and tell the Jan. 6 panel which ones he believes are protected by attorney-client privilege.
During the hearing on Monday, Carter also instructed Chapman to turn over the emails to Eastman, who abruptly retired from the university after the Capitol insurrection last year.
The lawyer for Chapman University, Fred Plevin, made it clear the school wasn’t interested in trying to help its former employee with this mess, saying it was “improper” for Eastman to use his Chapman account in his work for Trump.
“I liken it to having contraband on our system,” Plevin said.
Eastman’s lawyer, Charles Burnham, claimed that the professor’s dean knew he was working for Trump and didn’t have a problem with it.
Burnham confirmed that Eastman was working for Trump during some of the critical moments in the election steal plot, during which the law professor put together a blueprint for then-Vice President Mike Pence to hijack the 2020 election certification process and throw out Biden’s electors in key swing states.
Eastman also pleaded the Fifth 146 times when the Jan. 6 panel interviewed him last month, according to a lawyer working for the committee. However, it’s unclear exactly what kind of questions prompted him to do so.
