Trump Knew Voter Fraud Claims Were False: A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that emails from John Eastman, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, must be made available to House investigators because they were part of a crime linked to Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election.
The emails, according to Judge David O. Carter, “indicate that President Trump knew that the exact percentages of voting fraud were false but continued to flaunt those numbers, both in court and to the public.”
According to the judge, “these emails are sufficiently tied to and promote a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” While the two sides were still arguing over 562 additional documents from Eastman’s Chapman University email account, Carter, who sits on the federal district court in central California.
Had already given the House select committee looking into the US Capitol attack access to many of Eastman’s emails from around January 2021. The so-called crime-fraud exception permits disclosure of otherwise privileged materials if the communications were related to or in support of illegal or fraudulent conduct.
Applied to eight of the more than 500 Eastman documents that the judge was reviewing. The judge stated that the materials could be released because they fit the criteria for the exception.
Four of the documents were email exchanges that discussed potential legal disputes involving elections. “Dr. Eastman and other attorneys believe that – regardless of the merits – the primary objective of filing is to delay or otherwise disturb the January 6 vote,” Carter wrote in them.
In a new order from Carter, it was stated that “just having this matter pending in the Supreme Court, and not ruled on, may be enough to delay consideration of Georgia.” This statement was made in an email from Trump’s legal team.
The judgment stated that reading this email in conjunction with the other papers under consideration “makes evident that President Trump filed certain cases not to achieve legal relief, but to disrupt or postpone the January 6 congressional processes through the courts.”
It continues, “The Court determines that these four papers are adequately related to and promote the crime of obstruction.” Representatives for Trump and Eastman have been contacted by CNN for comment.
The judge is requiring the release of four further emails because they “show an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to advance fraudulent claims in federal court in order to prolong the January 6 vote.” Carter cited a lawsuit Trump had filed contesting the Georgia election results.
The judge continued by citing an email from December 2020 in which Eastman claimed to have informed Trump that some of the claims made in an early December state court election challenge were untrue.
Carter claims that Eastman stated the following in an email sent on December 30, 2020: Although the President signed verification for [the state court case] back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and proof supplied by the experts) have been incorrect. It would not be accurate for him to sign a fresh verification with that information.
Yet Trump and his lawyers later submitted a court complaint using the same false statistics, Carter claimed. The state court election challenge was attached to the federal lawsuit Trump’s attorneys filed rather than including the figures in the main body of the case. As Carter pointed out, Trump filed it without “rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise modifying” the false fraud numbers.
Trump also inserted a footnote in his federal lawsuit, which Carter described as an “effort” on his part to absolve himself of culpability for the false accusations. In the footnote, Trump stated that he was simply relying on the numbers that had been provided to him.
However, Carter added on Wednesday, “His attorneys’ own admissions show that the information given to him was that the percentages on the purported voter fraud were incorrect.”
The committee’s inquiry into the former President’s election reversal strategies will be strengthened by Carter’s revelation that Trump and Eastman “knowingly” misrepresented voter fraud counts in federal court.
The committee has asserted repeatedly that filing frivolous litigation to delay certification of the votes in crucial swing states was a critical component of Trump’s strategy to annul the 2020 election results.
That sentiment is echoed in the judge’s decision. The Justice Department and the local Atlanta prosecutor have also begun their own criminal investigations into 2020 election fraud at the same time as the emails’ disclosure.
Donald Trump signed legal documents challenging the results of the 2020 election that included voter fraud claims he knew were false, a federal judge says. A representative for Trump didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. https://t.co/TPlsQZojfB
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 19, 2022
The judge ruled on Wednesday that Eastman must also turn over some of the documents he used to propose to then-Vice President Mike Pence that Pence interfere with the certification of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021. The new ruling ordered the disclosure of a total of thirty-three documents and set a deadline for doing so of October 28.
The committee stated earlier this month that Eastman has been “consistently untrustworthy” in trying to hide his interactions from the ongoing investigation and that the investigators should now have access to more emails from one of his work email accounts.
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