John Eastman—he of insurrection memo fame—is petitioning to shield thousands of documents from the House Jan. 6 committee, Politico reports. Eastman filed a new petition this week in which he seeks to shield more than 3,200 documents comprising nearly 37,000 pages, claiming attorney-client privilege.
U.S. District Judge David Carter has proven unsympathetic to Eastman thus far in Eastman’s attempts to drag out the release of documents. Carter has ordered Eastman to produce at least 1,500 pages of records per day from a 19,000-page tranche obtained by a committee subpoena sent to Eastman’s ex-employer, Chapman University, and has further ordered him to prioritize emails for the days immediately before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection: Jan. 4-7.
This filing, however, is for the whole period of Eastman’s use of his Chapman account emails. There were nearly 100,000 pages originally included in the House committee’s subpoena of the records, but about 30,000 have already been removed as they were mass mailings unrelated to Eastman’s work with Trump to subvert the election.
Now Eastman is attempting to shield these emails and the Jan. 6 committee has refused “every claim,” so Eastman is asking Carter for a case-by-case review on the 37,000 or so pages left. Carter has already ruled that Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress in a criminal conspiracy in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter wrote in a March decision.
Full Article: [dailykos.com]