Lawyer says he dealt directly with Trump over Jan. 6 plans

Filing argues attorney-client privilege in place

Conservative lawyer John Eastman, architect of a strategy to overturn the 2020 election, dealt directly with President Donald Trump and received handwritten notes from him as the men sought to keep Trump in power, according to a new court filing.

The filing underscored how instrumental Eastman was in devising ways to fight Joe Biden’s victory and how personally involved Trump was in the attempt to keep the presidency in his hands. It also provided further documentation of how members of the Trump campaign and White House aides were involved in the plans.

The filing came as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is preparing for public hearings in June about the attempt to overturn the election and as more information has emerged about Eastman’s role in advising state officials in Pennsylvania to reject votes cast in favor of Biden.

Eastman did not release the contents of his communications with Trump and others in the White House and the Trump campaign, but he described them in general terms in a filing in his federal lawsuit in California against the House committee. He is fighting the release of hundreds of documents that the panel has demanded via subpoena, including by arguing that some of them are protected by attorneyclient privilege.

In the filing Thursday, Eastman argued that some of his emails with the White House and Trump campaign were covered by attorney-client privilege because, he said, the people he communicated with were functioning as “conduits” for or “agents” of Trump. He said he mostly communicated with Trump using six intermediaries, three of whom worked for the Trump campaign and three of whom worked directly for Trump while he was in office.

But Eastman said he also spoke directly to Trump, and the filing stated that Eastman received two “handwritten notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation.”

“While Dr. Eastman could (and did) communicate directly with former President Trump at times, many of his communications with the president were necessarily through these agents,” Eastman’s lawyers, Anthony T. Caso and Charles Burnham, wrote, referring to the six intermediaries.

The documents Eastman is seeking to block from release include the two handwritten notes from Trump; communications with what he called “potential clients,” including seven state legislators, who were seeking advice about how to challenge their states’ election results; a document discussing “various scenarios for Jan. 6”; and another discussing the “need to pursue election integrity litigation even in the event of Trump loss for the good of the country.”

In March, the federal judge in the case ruled that Eastman and Trump had most likely committed felonies as they pushed to overturn the election.