Comment Former President Donald Trump and his political allies understood that their allegations of widespread voter fraud in Georgia were baseless, but continued to push the baseless claims in court and to the public, according to recent federal court filings. The revelations were made in an 18-page opinion Wednesday on Trump ally and conservative attorney John Eastman’s resistance to a subpoena for emails from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill by a pro-Trump mob. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter found that several documents among Trump allies must be released because they showed the group engaged in “a known misrepresentation of voter fraud numbers in Georgia when attempting to overturn election results in federal court.” “The emails show that President Trump knew the specific voter fraud numbers were false, but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” Carter wrote. “The Court finds that these e-mails are sufficiently related to, and forwarded by, a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” In March, Carter said Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes by trying to block the January 6 congressional vote count. That determination came in a decision that addressed several sensitive emails that Eastman resisted turning over to the House committee. Eastman wrote key legal briefs aimed at denying Democrat Joe Biden a victory and later cited attorney-client privilege as a shield against turning over documents sought by the committee, saying he was representing Trump at the time. The panel had argued in its filing that Eastman’s claim of privilege was barred by the “crime/fraud exception.” This exemption means that communications between a lawyer and their client do not have to be kept confidential if the lawyer is found to be helping the client commit a crime. To resolve the dispute, the committee asked Carter, the judge, to privately review the documents to see if he believed Eastman was actually assisting Trump in criminal acts. In Wednesday’s deposition, Carter concluded from the collective documents that Trump’s legal team currently “makes it clear that President Trump has filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to stop or delay his proceedings Congress of January 6 through the courts”. The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump In an email, Eastman wrote that Trump signed documents for a Georgia lawsuit on Dec. 1, but “has since been informed that some of the allegations” in it are “inaccurate.” Eastman then wrote that Trump signing new documents for this lawsuit “with this knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate.” But, Carter wrote, “Trump and his lawyers eventually filed the complaint” with the knowingly inaccurate numbers. Carter also wrote that Trump signed a legal document, under oath, certifying to the Georgia court that the numbers “are true and correct” to the best of his knowledge. Carter instructed Eastman to release more than 30 documents sought by the House committee by 2:00 p.m. on October 28.
