A federal judge officially shot down John EASTMAN's bid to block a Jan. 6 committee subpoena

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https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/25/eastman-jan-6-panel-ruling-00002184

A federal judge in California on Tuesday delivered a forceful defense of the Jan. 6 select committee’s efforts, sharply rejecting a bid by attorney John Eastman — a key driver of Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election — to block a subpoena from the panel to his former employer, Chapman University.

“The public interest here is weighty and urgent,” said Judge David Carter in a 16-page ruling rejecting Eastman’s attempt to scuttle the subpoena for thousands of pages of his Chapman University emails. “Congress seeks to understand the causes of a grave attack on our nation’s democracy and a near-successful attempt to subvert the will of the voters.”

Carter said Eastman’s effort to stoke distrust of the election results could reasonably be considered an “influencing factor … for some of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021." He said he would entertain claims of attorney-client privilege for specific documents but would reject Eastman’s blanket attempt to stymie the select committee. Carter noted that Chapman had identified 19,000 documents relevant to House investigators.

The ruling is one of the most consequential yet for the Jan. 6 committee, which is fending off nearly a dozen lawsuits by Trump allies seeking to upend subpoenas for their testimony, documents or phone records. It comes a day after Carter signaled he was likely to rule this way and ordered Eastman to begin working with the Jan. 6 committee to identify any legitimately privileged documents.

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1. Great news

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