The House select committee investigating last year’s January 6 Capitol attack has obtained 101 emails from former President Donald Trump‘s attorney John Eastman after a judge denied his request to shield the emails from the committee last month.
Eastman had claimed the emails, dated between January 4 and January 7, 2021, should be protected under attorney-client privilege, but Judge David Carter found that “it more likely than not that President [Donald] Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” ruling that Eastman had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege since the emails were used to plan possible criminal activity.
The documents include plans sent to another Trump lawyerRudy Giuliani to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to stop the certification of PresidentJoe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election by rejecting some states’ electors during the joint session of Congress. Other emails include discussions regarding the use of court cases to justify a plan to use Pence to block the certification.
“This is not a criminal prosecution; this is not even a civil liability suit,” Carter wrote in his ruling. “At most, this case is a warning about the dangers of ‘legal theories’ gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms and desperation to win at all costs.”
So far, neither Trump nor Eastman has been criminally charged.
