WASHINGTON ( Associated Press) – Former President Donald Trump has signed legal documents challenging the results of the 2020 election, including allegations of voter fraud that he knew were false, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. said in.
In an 18-page opinion, US District Judge David Carter ordered that the emails Trump exchanged with Attorney John Eastman be handed over to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol Go. He said those emails could not be intercepted because they contained evidence of possible crimes.
“The email shows that President Trump knew specific voter fraud numbers were wrong, but continued to promote those numbers both in court and in the public,” Carter wrote.
While the judge’s findings in a separate Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the election result have no practical relevance, any evidence that Trump signed documents he knew were false, at least, There may be a remarkable fact. Lay the blame for widespread attempts to quash the results.
The judge specifically noted allegations by Trump’s attorneys that Fulton County in Georgia had wrongly counted more than 10,000 votes from dead people, criminals and unregistered voters. Those false allegations were part of a court document that Trump’s legal team filed in Georgia state court on December 4, 2021.
A few days later, Eastman warned in a message that Trump was informed that “certain allegations (and evidence provided by experts)” in that document presented in Georgia are false.
However, even after receiving Eastman’s message, Trump and his lawyers filed another legal complaint containing “similar false numbers,” the judge wrote. Trump testified under oath that the allegation was true as far as he knew.
Carter wrote that the emails are “substantially related and further a conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
Representatives for Trump and Eastman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On 6 January a spokesman for the commission declined to comment on the ongoing trial.
The ruling is the latest in a protracted legal dispute between Eastman – a conservative lawyer and the main architect of Trump’s desperate efforts to stay in office – and congressional investigators.
Eastman is trying to prevent the documents from being released to the commission on grounds of attorney-client privilege. The panel has argued that there is a legal exception that allows the disclosure of communications about offenses that are ongoing or may be committed in the future. And Carter has mostly agreed, ordering the House hundreds of emails since the spring.
In a surprise ruling last March, the judge assured that it was “most likely” that Trump committed crimes in his attempt to block the certification of the 2020 election.
In his ruling on Wednesday, Carter said he reviewed messages from Eastman and other lawyers that the “primary goal” of some of his trial was to prevent President Joe Biden from being certified as the winner of the election.
The evidence in its entirety makes it clear that “Trump did not bring certain lawsuits to achieve justice, but through the courts to obstruct or delay the January 6 proceedings in Congress,” the judge wrote.
Eastman’s emails are part of a House investigation into a multi-pronged plan by Trump and his allies to reverse the 2020 election results and into the subsequent violence on Capitol Hill. The distribution of the emails could be important for the commission as it enters the final months of its investigation, in which lawmakers must decide whether to recommend the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Trump and his aides.
The judge ordered Eastman to deliver the documents to the panel no later than the afternoon of October 28.
,
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report from Washington.
