A past attorney for former President Donald Trump will be releasing 10,000 pages of emails to the Jan. 6 committee related to his work on overturning the 2020 presidential election, his attorneys said Friday.
The new documents from John Eastman were part of the more than 36,000 pages of Trump-related emails over which the lawyer previously claimed executive privilege, but when U.S. District Court Judge David Carter ruled Eastman and Trump likely conspired to overturn the election illegally, Eastman waived his claim of executive privilege on 10,000 pages.
The committee will need time to review the newly released 10,000 pages before considering how to handle the other nearly 27,000 pages, Eastman’s lawyers said in a court filing against Chairman Bennie Thompson on Friday while requesting a brief reprieve.
Carter failed to consider how multiple aides of Trump had convinced the former president that election fraud did take place, Eastman argued.
“Such evidence is directly contrary to this Court’s March 28 finding that President Trump had been conclusively informed that there was no material fraud or illegality,” Eastman’s attorneys said.
“A fair resolution of this case requires that all such evidence be put before the Court for consideration,” they continued. “Dr. Eastman therefore requests permission to serve a reasonable number of Requests for Admission, Requests for Documents, and Interrogatories on the congressional defendants.”
The committee is also in a legal battle with Eastman’s former employer, Chapman University, to obtain his records that are protected by the institution. The committee subpoenaed the university earlier this year for all emails from Eastman between Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021, but Eastman filed a lawsuit against the committee and the university to halt the release of the 90,000 pages of emails.
During the weeks between Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election and the certification of the results on Jan. 6, Eastman attempted to convince Vice President Mike Pence that he could stop the certification by refusing to accept the votes from the states in which Trump’s loss was contested. However, Pence rejected the idea and certified the results.
Reporting by The Washington Examiner.
