(DCWatchdog.com) – A Donald Trump ally, law professor John Eastman, suffered a major legal defeat – and, by implication, so did the former president’s allegations that the 2020 election was stolen – as the US Supreme Court killed off Eastman’s appeal involving the January 6, 2021 events at the US Capitol.
In a decision on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected Eastman’s request to reverse the ruling of a California US District Judge that the law professor and former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results probably constituted a “crime.”
Meanwhile, the case saw conservative Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself without explaining why, reports Reuters, as cited by Newsmax.
In a 2022 decision, US District Judge David Carter ruled that ten email messages of Eastman archived by his former employer, Chapman University in California, could be released to the January 6 House select committee in the previous Congress.
Carter’s ruling declared that the emails were excluded from attorney-client privilege and could be disclosed since they were likely used to commit a crime.
The emails had already been obtained and made public by the former January 6 committee. Still, Eastman, a former lawyer and legal adviser for Trump, argued that Carter’s decision “imposes a stigma” on him.
The case reached the US Supreme Court after, in November 2022, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals turned down Eastman’s request to overturn Carter’s “crime-fraud” decision.
Reuters notes that Eastman represented Trump in a lawsuit that sought to cancel the results from the 2020 vote in four states, which was rejected.
Eastman has been known for advancing the argument that then-US Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, had the powers to avert the certification of the 2020 election results.
He made the case in a speech during the Stop the Steal rally in the nation’s capital that he gave alongside another Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani, and also in a memo.
John Eastman is among the 19 defendants indicted in Georgia by Fulton County’s Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis for allegedly trying to reverse the 2020 election results in the state.
Other defendants in the case include Trump, Giuliani, and Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
