Claiming attorney-client privilege, Trump attorney John Eastman has withheld 37,000 pages of emails from the House Select Committee on the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, and the Committee has objected to every one of those claims, Politico reports.
Eastman wrote a memo to Donald Trump outlining a plan that, he claimed, would provide a slightly illegal and highly unconstitutional way to stop the certification of the state slates of electors that would only require a “minor violation” of the law. Constitutional scholars general characterize Eastman’s plan as nutsy-cuckoo (not their words).
U.S. District Court Judge David Carter will now oversee a page-by-page review of the material to determine if privilege applies. Carter has already stated that it’s “more likely than not” that Eastman and Trump conspired to obstruct the operations of Congress.
The emails come from the Chapman University server, from when Eastman worked as a professor at the ultra-conservative college. The Committee has argued that Eastman was not operating as Trump’s lawyer, but rather as an ally and agent of Trump in an illegal endeavor, which would void any privilege claim.