“As a member of the Election Integrity Working Group and in furtherance of my illustration of President Trump as candidate and his marketing campaign committee, I started conducting authorized analysis and collaborating with tutorial advisers and different supporters of the President concerning the myriad variety of factual and authorized points we anticipated may come up following the election,” Eastman reveals.
Mitchell directed questions on Eastman’s assertion to her legal professional John Rowley, who didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark,
Eastman’s submitting is the first-ever formal description of his legal work for Trump. He described his authorized relationship with Trump in court docket papers filed within the U.S. District Court docket of Central California, the place he’s been ordered by a choose to provide hundreds of pages of data to the Jan. 6 choose committee. Eastman has tried to defend many of those data by claiming attorney-client privilege, which prompted the choose committee to demand proof of his authorized relationship with Trump, the Trump marketing campaign or the White Home.
The choose within the case, David Carter, agreed with the panel and ordered Eastman to element his work for Trump. The case entails 90,000 pages of Eastman’s emails held by his former employer, Chapman College, which was subpoenaed by the choose committee. Though Chapman has agreed to supply the paperwork, Eastman sued final month to dam them.
Home Basic Counsel Doug Letter, who’s main the choose committee’s battle in court docket, indicated in a current listening to earlier than Carter that the committee considers Eastman to be among the many most pivotal figures within the investigation.
“Professor Eastman seems to be a central participant within the growth of a authorized technique to justify a coup,” Letter mentioned final week.
Tuesday’s submitting gives the clearest perception but into the connection between Trump and the authorized adviser who helped stress then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly try to overturn the election. Eastman says he suggested Trump on varied lawsuits in search of to invalidate tens of millions of votes and spoke to state legislators who he mentioned had the authority to nominate their very own set of pro-Trump electors.
Eastman goes on to element why he opposes the discharge of tons of of pages of paperwork that may make clear his conversations with the Trump marketing campaign throughout the important thing weeks of December.
“[Redacted] is an legal professional who reached out to Dr. Eastman providing to function a volunteer legal professional serving to together with his efforts on behalf of President Trump,” Eastman says, describing his effort to defend one doc from the panel.
One other set of paperwork he seeks to defend associated to “offering knowledgeable recommendation to Dr. Eastman on behalf of a crew of statistical consultants that have been conducting statistical analyses of election returns in numerous jurisdictions.”
Eastman additionally makes an attempt to defend contacts with an individual he identifies solely as “Oltmann,” an obvious reference to Joe Oltmann, a podcast host who performed an early position in spreading discredited claims about Dominion Voting Techniques.
Eastman’s submitting signifies that he didn’t formalize his relationship to the Trump marketing campaign till Dec. 6, 2020. He supplied an “engagement letter” displaying that he started working for the Trump marketing campaign — together with Trump in his capability as a candidate for reelection — at the moment. The letter indicated that Eastman would offer illustration “in federal litigation issues in relation to the 2020 presidential basic election, together with election issues associated to the Electoral Faculty.”
However the letter Eastman posted with the court docket is unsigned and will result in additional questions concerning the timing of his work on Trump’s behalf.
Eastman’s most vital formal authorized motion was to file a Supreme Court docket transient on behalf of Trump on Dec. 17, 2020, after it was accredited by Trump marketing campaign legal professional Matthew Morgan, Eastman says.
Eastman’s submitting additionally consists of search terms he’s deploying, on the request of the choose committee, to establish data from Jan. 4-7 that they’ve requested be supplied shortly.