Trump and Attorney Engaged in Potential 'Criminal Conspiracy' to Defraud U.S., Jan. 6 Committee Alleges
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James Devaney/GC Images Donald Trump
The bipartisan congressional committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots said in a court filing this week that former President Donald Trump and his allies — including lawyer John Eastman — could potentially be charged by the Department of Justice with criminal violations for their role in the event. They just need more evidence to prove it.
The brief was filed in response to Eastman's attempts to keep records, including his emails, hidden from the House of Representatives committee, citing attorney-client privilege.
But the committee referred in its new filing to an exception to attorney-client privilege: when a "client consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud or crime."
In a statement issued Wednesday, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said he believes "Eastman's emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power."
Thompson noted, however, that the select committee "is not conducting a criminal investigation."
Trump has long maintained the investigation into his conduct around Jan. 6 is politically motivated and he did nothing wrong. He alternately praised the mob of his supporters when they stormed the U.S. Capitol and told them to be peaceful.
He later warned, "These are the things and events that happen .... Remember this day forever!"
Eastman has described himself as Trump's attorney who was assisting the then-president in the latter's efforts to prove that the 2020 election was somehow "stolen."
But, according to the Jan. 6 committee's filing, Eastman was more than an adviser: "He spoke at the rally on the morning of January 6, spreading proven falsehoods to the tens of thousands of people attending that rally, and appears to have a broader role in many of the specific issues the Select Committee is investigating."
In response to 146 questions posed by the committee, Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the filing says, and has attempted to "conceal a range of relevant documents behind claims of attorney-client privilege and work-product protection."
The committee claims that even if attorney-client privilege did exist between Trump and Eastman, many of the attorney's communications included third parties with whom he did not have a "confidential relationship."
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Further, the committee argues in its filing, Eastman sent those emails using "an unprotected university server" at Chapman University, where he previously served as a professor, "even after he was expressly admonished by the University President and reminded that he was not free to use University email and computers in support of a political candidate."
The committee says in its filing that Eastman's communications should be reviewed in private by the court to determine whether they meet a crime/fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.
Eastman's lawyer, Charles Burnham, told PEOPLE in a statement that "like all attorneys Dr. John Eastman has a responsibility to protect client confidences, even at great personal risk and expense."
"The Select Committee has responded to Dr. Eastman's efforts to discharge this responsibility by accusing him of criminal activity," Burnham continued. "Because this is a civil matter, Dr. Eastman will not have the benefit of the Constitutional protections normally afforded to those accused by their government of criminal conduct. Nonetheless, we look forward to responding in due course."
Eastman previously told The New York Times that he stood by his work with Trump but cast it differently than did the Jan. 6 committee.
He said a notorious memo he wrote about ways to try and keep Trump in power — despite no evidence of wrongdoing and a clear defeat — had been misconstrued. Still, he was interested in the idea that the election was illegitimate, he told the Times.
"There are lots of allegations out there that didn't get their day in court and lots of people that believe them and wish they got their day in court and I am working very diligently with several teams — statistical teams, election specialists teams, all sorts of teams — to try and identify the various claims and determine whether they have merit or there is reasonable explanation for them," he said last year.
Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock John Eastman
Eastman has found himself facing other investigations recently. On Tuesday, the State Bar of California announced that he was under an ethics investigation for his role in assisting the former president with Trump's quest to overturn the election.
Eastman is one of many being looked into as part of the Jan. 6 committee's wide-ranging investigation. According to its filing, the committee "has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States."
That conclusion, the committee said, is based in part on depositions given by numerous former Trump aides and advisers, including Jason Miller who, in his deposition earlier this month, said the former president was told "in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose" by data analysts — and yet kept publicly saying the election was "rigged" when it became clear he had lost.
The deposition is included in the committee's latest legal filing.
Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper in December, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger — an anti-Trump Republican serving on the committee — said he wasn't prepared to say whether he believes the former president committed a crime, but that the House committee should have "a pretty good idea" once its probe is over.
"I don't want to go there yet to say, 'Do I believe he has [committed a crime]'? I think that's obviously a pretty big thing to say. We want to know though, and I think we'll — by the end of our investigation and by the time our report is out — have a pretty good idea," Kinzinger, 43, said on CNN's State of the Union. "We'll be able to have out on the public record anything Justice Department needs maybe in pursuit of that."
The congressman continued then: "Nobody is above the law. And if the president knowingly allowed what happened on Jan. 6 to happen and, in fact, was giddy about it, and that violates a criminal statute, he needs to be held accountable for that."
