Eastman Retreats From Appeal Of Jan. 6 Stay Request

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 04:  John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, testifies during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee June 4, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee heard from six representatives of groups that were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for special scrutiny.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 04: John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, testifies during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee June 4, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The co... WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 04: John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, testifies during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee June 4, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee heard from six representatives of groups that were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for special scrutiny. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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After everything he was trying to hide was inadvertently disclosed to the public, 2020 Trump lawyer John Eastman withdrew his appeal to stop the documents’ release.

In a filing before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Eastman said that he no longer wanted the court to issue an order halting the January 6 Committee from reviewing emails that a lower court judge ordered released.

Eastman had earlier asked the appeals court to intervene, but the January 6 Committee said that it had already accessed the emails via a link that Eastman provided.

“Instead of honoring that request, the Select Committee downloaded and reviewed the contested documents, later falsely asserting that it did so because no
motion to stay was pending at the time,” Eastman wrote in the Thursday filing. “It then, in an unredacted public filing to this Court, provided the link to the documents, which have now been obtained by members of the media and publicly disseminated further.”

The emails were revealed on Wednesday following a bizarre mishap: the January 6 Committee included the address of the link that Eastman had sent it to access the records in a Tuesday night court filing. The link had not been deactivated by the time the filing hit the docket, leaving it open for members of the public — and press — to access.

The messages themselves documented discussions among Eastman and other key Trump attorneys as they discovered that key data they had cited in a Georgia state lawsuit was inaccurate. From there, the emails showed, Eastman and others discussed how to still include the data, which they appear to have understood was false, in another lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s win, hoping to persuade a federal judge while limiting their own liability for including the faulty information.

It’s a potentially shocking breach of attorney ethics, even for a group of people who spent months arguing with no evidence that the 2020 election needed to be overturned.

U.S. District Judge David Carter for the Central District of California ordered the emails released to the committee after finding that they were likely evidence of a crime — meaning that they qualify for an exception to attorney-client privilege.

Though Eastman is dropping the portion of his appeal as it pertains to stopping the records from being released, he’s keeping another request alive. That portion asks the appeals court to vacate Carter’s finding that a crime likely occurred in the drafting and filing of the federal lawsuit that referenced the erroneous data.

Read the filing here:

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