Right-wing attorney John Eastman revealed in a late-night court filing that he was in touch directly with then-President Donald Trump about plans to overturn the 2020 election, which included receiving Trump’s handwritten notes.
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection is still seeking documents from Eastman. In a court filing, Eastman described two of them as “hand-written notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation.”
Eastman also said he was in touch with “six conduits” of Trump about what the former President wanted as the lawyer took part in the effort to plot court cases challenging the election. Three of the people worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign, and three were the President’s immediate staff, Eastman said.
“While Dr. Eastman could (and did) communicate directly with former President Trump at times, many of his communications with the President were necessarily through these agents,” Eastman’s attorneys wrote about a total of 113 documents on Thursday.
In court, Eastman is arguing that the House Select Committee should not be able to access these communications and others — totaling about 600 pages — because they are private attorney-client discussions about legal efforts.
The judge — David O. Carter of Santa Ana, California — previously determined that Eastman couldn’t protect 101 documents about his election work for Trump because the attempt to use court cases to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence and legislators block the congressional certification on January 6 was a political strategy, and that Trump and Eastman were “more likely than not” planning a crime after the election. Neither has been charged, and the ruling did not automatically extend to the new batch of records, prompting Carter to have to look at more of Eastman’s emails one by one.
Two of the documents that are still in dispute are the handwritten notes.
