LOS ANGELES (CN) — A law professor with whom then-President Donald Trump concocted a plan to overturn the will of the people following the 2020 presidential election must turn over most of his emailed communications with Trump and the president’s advisers to the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, a federal judge ruled Monday.
But he didn’t stop there. U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee, said the reason Chapman University professor John Eastman must hand over 101 documents — emails and attachments — to the committee is because he and Trump likely broke the law in trying to stop Congress from counting electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The illegality of the plan was obvious. Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections,” Carter wrote in a 44-page order. “Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election. As Vice President Pence stated, ‘no vice president in American history has ever asserted such authority.’ Every American — and certainly the president of the United States — knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed.
“With a plan this ‘BOLD,’ President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle,” Carter wrote, using the word Eastman used for Trump’s plan in a memo he drafted on Jan. 3.
In a written statement, Eastman’s lawyer, Charles Burnham wrote: “As an attorney, Dr. John Eastman has the responsibility to protect the confidences of his clients to the fullest extent of the law,” adding, “He intends to comply with the court’s order.”
House General Counsel Douglas Letter declined to comment, referring the request to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office which did not respond by press time.
Eastman, a longtime Chapman University professor and former dean of its law school, had sought to block his former employer from turning over his emails sent and received from his school account, which had been subpoenaed by the House of Representatives’ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Eastman argued he was acting as Trump’s lawyer, and that the emails fell under attorney-client privilege.
Judge Carter ordered Eastman to go through each of the emails and explain why each one should be protected, and to start with emails sent and received between Jan. 4 and 7, 2021. Eastman requested that 111 emails and attachments from that period be kept private.
Douglas Letter, the Select Committee’s lawyer, argued the emails were should not be covered under attorney-client privilege, in part because Eastman’s advice was primarily campaign advice and not related to any particular litigation. He also argued that some of the emails fell under the “crime-fraud exception” which exempts certain communication from attorney-client privilege if the client is in the midst of committing a crime or a fraud.
No comments:
Post a Comment