John Eastman, an attorney who outlined a six-step plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to help US President Donald Trump subvert the 2020 presidential election, is slated to produce some 10,000 pages of emails to the US House Select Committee investigating the insurrection, according to a Friday filing in a California federal court.
Eastman, who previously claimed attorney-client privilege for more than 37,000 pages of emails, has faced pushback from US District Judge David Carter following a March ruling in which he claimed Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” that Trump “attempted to obstruct” the certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021.
Eastman’s legal team requests that Carter grant their client a reprieve, noting that the 9-member House panel has signaled that it needs more time to figure out a way to tackle the remaining 27,000 records.
The filing claims the previous ruling did not take into account evidence that they claim demonstrates that many of Trump’s aides convinced him that widespread election fraud did take place during the 2020 election. Some have proclaimed Trump genuinely believed the presidential election against President Joe Biden was riddled with voter fraud.
“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,” attorneys for Eastman argued.
“A fair resolution of this case requires that all such evidence be put before the Court for consideration,” the lawyers said. “Dr. Eastman therefore requests permission to serve a reasonable number of Requests for Admission, Requests for Documents, and Interrogatories on the congressional defendants.”
Eastman is asking for at least two weeks to prepare a legal argument that maintains his attorney-client privilege claims. The move is slated to push the resolution timeline into the summer, possibly June or July.
The filing comes ahead of the House Select Committee’s public hearings, with at least eight of them scheduled for June.
It is alleged that, in the days leading up to the January 6 insurrection, Eastman and his lawyers pressured both then-Vice President Pence and his lawyers to back a theory in which Pence could simply not count Biden’s Electoral College votes in states where Trump claimed there to be a dispute.