In a Sunday filing, former Donald Trump attorney John Eastman — one of the key architects of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — disclosed that he complied with a federal district judge’s order and provided the Jan. 6 Committee with a dropbox link that contained the eight emails he has been refusing to share.
In the same email he provided the link, he also asked the committee members not to look at the documents attached until he had a chance to file an appeal.
The House select committee went right ahead and looked anyway.
In a letter to Eastman, a lawyer for the House committee, which has been fighting to get the records for months, told Eastman they downloaded and examined the documents.
“I am hereby formally alerting you that when you provided the relevant documents from Professor Eastman earlier this evening in this case, the Select Committee downloaded and examined all of those documents,” committee general counsel Douglas Letter wrote. Eastman included Letter’s email with his appeal.
The emails are a part of several thousand documents that Eastman and the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack have been fighting over in court. A few weeks ago, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter ordered Eastman to deliver several documents — including the eight emails — to the select committee after ruling they were not protected under attorney-client privilege.
Eastman is now asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the select committee from further examining the records, and to make the committee return or destroy them.
“While a stay barring the production is no longer available, an order directing the return or destruction of the documents and barring further use of them pending the appeal remains a viable remedy,” Eastman’s attorney Anthony Caso wrote in the filing.
According to Judge Carter — who initially ordered Estman to release the documents — the emails might give insight into and evidence of a likely crime committed by Trump during his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
According to Judge Carter, one of the emails indicates Trump signed legal documents attesting to the accuracy of supposed voter fraud data which he knew to be faulty. Other emails include communication between Trump attorneys that might “demonstrate an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to press false claims in federal court for the purpose of delaying the January 6 vote,” wrote Judge Carter. He also said the emails in question include discussions between Trump lawyers indicating that a “primary goal” of filing lawsuits was “to delay or otherwise disrupt” the congressional vote to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential elections.
