Federal agents, armed with a search warrant, seized the phone of John Eastman, a lawyer who was advising former President Donald J. Trump on a key element of efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election, according to a court case filed by Mr Eastman on Monday.
The statement, a government property restitution proposal, said FBI agents in New Mexico, acting on behalf of the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Office, stopped Mr. Eastman as he was leaving a restaurant last Wednesday and seized him. his iPhone. A copy of the order, included as evidence in Mr. Eastman’s documentation, says the phone will be taken to the inspector general’s lab in Northern Virginia.
The seizure of Mr Eastman’s phone last week is the latest evidence that the Justice Department is stepping up its criminal investigation into various areas of Mr Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he was defeated in his re-election.
Mr. Eastman, a law professor from California, helped develop and promote a plan to justify blocking or delaying Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of Electoral College results establishing Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election. Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman pressured Mr. Pence to implement the plan when Mr. Pence chaired the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
Mr Pence’s refusal to agree to the scheme has fueled the violence that has gripped the Capitol that day and has become a bloody symbol of Mr Trump’s efforts to undermine the election result.
Mr Eastman was also important in advising Mr Trump to create alleged voter lists in support of Mr Trump in key swinging states that Mr Biden had won.
Mr Eastman’s phone seizure appears to have taken place on the same day that federal agents also confiscated the phone of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was central to Mr Trump’s attempts to force the country’s top prosecutors to support his false allegations of election fraud.
Both Mr Eastman and Mr Clark were the main characters in this month’s public hearings by the House of Representatives’ elected committee on 6 January. But search warrants on their phones show that the Department of Justice is also interested in the communications the two men may have had regarding a broad criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s various attempts to stay in power.
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