John Eastman, the attorney who crafted a plot to overturn the 2020 election results to keep Donald Trump in the White House, continues to stonewall the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection by asserting attorney-client privilege on 37,000 pages of emails.
It's the latest indication of how vehemently Eastman - and probably the former president - really wants to keep the correspondence out of the hands of Committee investigators. As Politico reports, the Committee has objected to "every claim," meaning that U.S. District Court Judge David Carter now will need to review those privilege claims on a case-by-case basis - all 37,000 pages.
The scope of Eastman's privilege claims came to light in a status report to Carter on Monday. The judge had ordered the attorney in January to undertake a review of emails related to his work for Trump and to plow through 1,000 to 1,500 pages per business day. Carter ordered Eastman to create a detailed “privilege log” that describes the contents of the communications that he asserts are privileged and provide other relevant details.
Carter has already ruled that he believes Eastman and Trump “more likely than not” engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress, an effort he called “a coup in search of a legal theory.” In early April, Eastman turned over thousands of pages of Trump-related emails after Carter ruled that the attorney's correspondence with Trump is not covered by attorney-client privilege.
