Trump's day goes from bad to worse with Eastman emails ruling

[Nevilledog]

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Lisa Rubin
@lawofruby
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A federal judge ruled today that John Eastman has to turn over 8 more emails to the Jan. 6 committee. Despite the small number of documents implicated, that ruling is a *big problem* for your favorite former president, as I discuss @maddowblog tonight:

msnbc.com
Trump's day goes from bad to worse with Eastman emails ruling
As Trump was deposed in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit, a federal judge ruled his former lawyer must produce more communications to Jan. 6 investigators.
3:10 PM · Oct 19, 2022

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-eastman-jan-6-communications-ruling-rcna53050

*snip*

Today’s opinion by U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter does not require Eastman to disclose all that many documents. Rather, of the more than 560 documents over which Eastman claimed privilege, he has been ordered to produce 33 to the committee — and only eight of those documents are attorney-client communications that the court nonetheless has ordered Eastman to turn over because they satisfy the “crime-fraud exception,” or put another way, they are evidence of criminal conduct by Trump.

But what today’s ruling lacks vis-á-vis the volume of materials implicated, it more than makes up for in their significance. Specifically, Judge Carter found that four communications Eastman sought to withhold are evidence of Trump’s attempt to obstruct the Jan. 6 certification while four more reflect his participation in a conspiracy to defraud the United States. And while Carter has divulged only snippets of these eight communications, what he has revealed about their content is both factually stunning and legally significant for both the Justice Department's ongoing criminal investigation and that of Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia.

Note that in examining the materials at issue, it wasn’t enough for Judge Carter that Eastman’s emails be “related to disrupting” the Jan. 6 certification process. Instead, what caused him to say that four of the documents were evidence of obstruction is that they suggest "the primary goal" of filing lawsuits related to the election was "to delay or otherwise disrupt" the Jan. 6 vote. Carter wrote:

In one email, for example, President Trump’s attorneys state that ‘[m]erely having this case pending in the Supreme Court, not ruled on, might be enough to delay consideration of Georgia.’ This email, read in context with other documents in this review, make clear that President Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the January 6 congressional proceedings through the courts.

And Carter’s description of the other four emails required to be produced under the crime-fraud exception is even more damning. As Trump and his lawyers pressed claims that Fulton County “improperly counted” thousands of votes, including precise numbers of votes cast by deceased people, felons and unregistered voters, Eastman explained in a Dec. 31, 2020, email that Trump was resistant to signing a new verification in federal court with “specific numbers ... included” because Trump “has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate.”

*snip*

[dutch777]

1. Long overdue. Let's keep this sort of judicial thinking rolling!

[Cha]

2. Rt TY! nt

[Beetwasher.]

3. The Wheel is Grinding Finely

[usonian]

4. Long story short: they are evidence of criminal conduct by Trump

Precedent has been set.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. Good

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. What's a little conspiracy to obstruct justice among MAGAts?