“It’s going to get intense” – January 6th court battle takes ugly turn for Donald Trump
The January 6th Committee revealed a big part of where things are headed when it argued in a recent court filing that it was entitled to emails belonging to Trump election lawyer John Eastman, on the basis that Trump and Eastman committed crimes together. This made it fairly clear that the committee intends to criminally refer Trump for federal prosecution when its probe is complete.
Of course we’re still several steps removed from that – the first of which is the committee’s need to win the court battle over Eastman’s emails. That took a big turn in the committee’s favor on Wednesday when a federal judge announced that he’s reviewing the emails himself, so he can determine which ones are covered by attorney-client privilege, and give the rest to the committee. This is going to be a big deal in two ways.
First, the committee is about to obtain what it believes is proof that Trump and Eastman criminally conspired to commit election crimes – which it can use during upcoming public hearings to convince the American public that Trump is a criminal, and which it can use in its eventual criminal referral against Trump.
Second, when the judge gives some or all of the Eastman emails to the committee, he’ll be ruling that attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply to those emails because Trump and Eastman were indeed conspiring to commit crimes together. So a federal judge is about to rule, by default, that Trump committed election crimes.
If the media covers this ruling properly, it’ll begin driving home the message to average Americans that Donald Trump is every bit the fraudulent criminal that his detractors have long accused him of being. Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance tweeted that “It’s going to get intense when a federal judge rules the Committee is entitled to see Eastman’s emails because the evidence suggests Trump was crime-ing with Eastman, not getting legit legal advice.” She’s 100% right.
