He’s a one-narcissist crime spree
If the Department of Justice does not indict Trump for this, Merrick Garland may as well close up shop and turn out the lights. The rest of the country will not be far behind (New York Times):
Former President Donald J. Trump signed a document swearing under oath that information in a Georgia lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true even though his own lawyers had told him it was false, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.
The accusation came in a ruling by the judge, David O. Carter, ordering John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who strategized with the former president about overturning the election, to hand over 33 more emails to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Judge Carter, who serves with the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, determined that the emails contained possible evidence of criminal behavior.
“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” Judge Carter wrote. He added in a footnote that the suit contained language saying Mr. Trump was relying on information provided to him by others.
The committee has fought for months to get access to hundreds of Mr. Eastman’s emails, viewing him as the intellectual architect of plans to subvert the 2020 election, including Mr. Trump’s effort to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021. Repeatedly, the panel has argued that a “crime-fraud exception” pierces the typical attorney-client privilege that often protects communications between lawyers and clients.
On Wednesday, Carter agreed, writing that in their effort to delay vote certificationTrump and Eastman knowingly misrepresented “voter fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court.” That is, their legal efforts were “not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings through the courts.”
That would be … bad. Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) observes that obtaining these emails will help prosecutors in both the Georgia and Jan. 6th plot investigations:
These emails are going to have all sorts of ramifications — in Fani Willis’ investigation and the DOJ investigation. And they’ll likely make it easier for both Willis and Thomas Windom (who is leading the Trump fraud investigation) to obtain related emails that were seized from Mar-a-Lago.
All I want for Christmas….