A federal judge's extraordinary assertion last week that former President Trump likely committed felonies connected to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection marked a milestone for the House committee investigating the attack.
American law professor; legal and constitutional scholarCalifornia attorney John Eastman speaks at a rally in April 2021. Eastman, who was an attorney for then-President Trump, has become a central figure in the Jan. 6 investigation.
Such a statement doesn't mean charges will be filed but puts pressure on the Justice Department to act. “Judge Carter looked at the evidence that's available and concluded this was an attempted coup in search of a legal investigation,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School. “No judge comes to such a conclusion lightly. But everything that we know about what happened supports what Judge Carter said.
Eastman was part of a Jan. 2 call, reportedly including Trump, in which he briefed 300 GOP lawmakers from several states in a strategy session on decertifying 2020 presidential election results. He testified before the Georgia Legislature Jan. 3, and was reportedly in the Trump legal team's war room at the Willard InterContinental hotel in the days leading up to Jan. 6.. They advised Vice President Mike Pence that when Congress met Jan.
After the riot ended, Eastman again emailed Pence lawyer Greg Jacob to say that the vice president still should send the election back to the states rather than certifying it, based on what he called a "relatively minor violation" of the procedural law., Eastman appeared before the committee in December but answered only biographical questions before invoking the 5th Amendment 146 times and refused to provide any documents.
The committee has used the lawsuit to release some key evidence it had gathered so far, including excerpts from multiple depositions where witnesses said Trump was repeatedly informed he had lost the election and that "[T]here are things lawyers can't do even in the name of zealous representation,” Chemerinsky said, adding that among those are participating in crimes or “attempting coups to overthrow the government.”
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