Trump Lawyer Appeals Court Order to Hand Over Emails to Jan. 6 Committee

Constitutional law expert John Eastman testifies during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 4, 2013. Alex Wong/Getty Images

John Eastman, who was an attorney for the Trump campaign, has filed a notice of his appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after a federal judge reaffirmed an order asking that the lawyer hand over certain emails to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach incident.

Eastman had aided in the preparation of legal filings for Trump that contested the results of the 2020 presidential race in multiple states. The Jan. 6 committee contends that the filings were an attempt to overthrow the government. The committee asked for access to some of Eastman’s communications.

In an Oct. 19 order (pdf), California-based federal Judge David Carter claimed that former President Donald Trump “knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.”

As such, he found that 33 email documents from Eastman’s Chapman University account are “sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” Carter ordered Eastman to disclose the 33 documents to the Jan. 6 committee by Oct. 28.

On Oct. 27, Eastman filed a 10-page motion (pdf), asking the Court to reconsider its Oct. 19 order or alternatively stay the order pending an appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court for the Ninth District, pointing out that disclosure of privileged information amounts to “irreparable injury.”

The motion also argued that attorney-client privilege is a “public good” and that if this privilege is called into doubt, “the communication between any client and among any attorneys will be called into question.”

As a consequence, attorneys will no longer be comfortable voicing doubts about legal or factual claims due to fear that expressing such a doubt might nullify the privilege, it warned.

However, Judge Carter, a Clinton nominee, dismissed the motion’s request in an Oct. 28 order (pdf), reaffirming his earlier judgment that Eastman must disclose the 33 emails to the House committee.

“Dr. Eastman’s affidavit presents no evidence that the Court ‘manifestly failed’ to consider when ruling that the crime-fraud exception applies. Because Dr. Eastman fails to carry his burden under Rule 7-18(c), the Court DENIES his motion for reconsideration,” the Oct. 28 order said.

Attorney-Client Privilege

Judge Carter had reviewed 562 documents belonging to Eastman at the Jan. 6 committee’s request. Eastman claimed that 561 of these documents are protected work products, out of which 54 are protected under attorney-client privilege.

For the one document Eastman did not assert work product privilege, he claimed attorney-client privilege. Carter’s Oct. 19 order had asked for Eastman to disclose 33 of the documents from the 562 that were reviewed.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Paul Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative watchdog group, said that the Jan. 6 committee has exceeded its authority and is presently only engaged in a “fishing expedition and harassment.”

“I think [Eastman’s lawyers] were basically trying to show the court that that was a claim of attorney-client privilege that applied to that email. But the larger issues in the Jan. 6 Committee is they are overreaching.”

“They’re not respecting that attorney-client privilege and work-product privilege. And even so, some of this is first amendment protected communications that we have.”