Federal agents have seized the phone of John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump during his attempt to cancel the 2020 election, according to court documents Monday.
Eastman revealed the confiscation in a lawsuit filed Monday in a federal court in New Mexico, demanding the return of property from the government. According to his file, FBI agents acting on behalf of the Justice Department’s internal oversight body stopped Eastman as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico on June 22 to pick up his phone.
A copy of the search warrant included in Eastman’s court documents says the phone will be taken to the forensic lab of the attorney general of the Northern Virginia Department of Justice.
The seizure marks only the latest indication of how the Justice Department is stepping up its criminal investigation into Trump’s failed efforts to stay in office and prevent a peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden.
The same day, FBI agents confiscated Eastman’s phone, and federal investigators raided the home of Jeff Clark, a former Justice Department official who eagerly highlighted Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud. The search came on the eve of a congressional hearing in which a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol highlighted Trump and Clark’s efforts to put pressure on the Justice Department to support the former president’s false allegations. for electoral fraud.
In recent hearings, the House of Representatives committee on January 6 showed footage of Clark and Eastman repeatedly invoking their right to the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination during closed-door testimony before a congressional committee.
Former law professor Eastman resigned in January 2021 from Chapman University in Southern California amid discontent over his role in Trump’s attempt to cancel the election. He remains a Fellow at the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank.
In the weeks following Trump’s defeat, Eastman emerged as the architect of a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to postpone or outright block the certification of election results. In a note, he argues that Pence may unilaterally reject voter lists from states where Trump’s allies say there is widespread fraud – a plan that a constitutional expert told Insider was a “proposed coup disguised in legal language.” .
Pence’s refusal to agree to this scheme was a source of anger for Trump. On January 6, when his supporters stormed the US Capitol, the former president said Pence “did not have the courage to do what he had to do to defend our country.”
Then a crowd of Trump supporters began chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” According to White House officials before a congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, Trump agreed.
Eastman’s own efforts to cancel the 2020 election continued even after the rebels left the US Capitol, according to former White House lawyer Eric Hershman. In a statement to the commission on Jan. 6, Hershman said Eastman continued to push for a way to invalidate Biden’s election victory in the Electoral College, citing refuted allegations of fraud to justify accepting alternative constituencies from states on the battlefield such as Arizona and Pennsylvania. .
Hershman told investigators he had asked Eastman to see a lawyer.
“I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’ve ever received in your life: Get a great criminal defense attorney. You will need it, “he said. “Then I shut him up.”
In a March 22 ruling, a federal judge wrote that Congressional investigators had the right to obtain Eastman documents related to their investigation.
“If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan worked, it would end the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution,” the judge wrote. If the party does not undertake to investigate and hold those responsible accountable, the Court fears that January 6 will be repeated. “
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