SCOTUS declines to hear John Eastman's appeal to undo ruling allowing House Jan. 6 committee access to his emails

2023-10-02 22:22

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will not take up former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman's request to undo a ruling that allowed the House January 6 select committee to access emails he said were shielded by attorney-client privilege.

Eastman had asked the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling, even though the case became moot when the emails were handed over to the committee and then inadvertently made public with a live link that was left unredacted in a court filing submitted by the committee's lawyers.

His attorneys argued in court papers that the ruling "created a stigma" for both Eastman and Trump.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted that he did not participate, but he did not provide an explanation. Eastman is one of Thomas' former clerks.

The committee had obtained the handful of emails after a federal judge, in a notable March 2022 ruling, concluded that the emails fell under the so-called "crime-fraud" exemption to the privilege because the emails showed that Trump and Eastman may have been plotting a crime in their efforts to disrupt Congress' January 6, 2021, election certification vote.

Eastman, when he was Trump's attorney during the 2020 election, spearheaded efforts to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay Congress' counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6. Pence ultimately resisted the pressure from Trump and his allies to interrupt the congressional ceremony.

"Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021," Judge David Carter wrote in his 2022 ruling.

Eastman's attorneys wrote in court papers that the committee's "action of accessing disputed documents while a motion to stay was pending, and then publishing in a public filing a live link to the confidential documents that were the subject of the appeal, deprived Petitioner of the opportunity to show that the 'crime-fraud' conclusions of the District Court were clearly erroneous, thus clearing his name and that of his former client, former President Trump."

Thomas has been scrutinized for his participation in cases involving the January 6 committee's investigation after it was revealed that Thomas's wife was in communication with key players to the election reversal schemes, including Eastman.