On Wednesday (July 27), the Department of Justice revealed it had obtained a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Eastman, who had spoken at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, hours before Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
Wednesday’s news comes a month after federal agents were authorized to seize Eastman’s phone; however, they needed a second search warrant to search the phone’s contents.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court in New Mexico, federal prosecutor Thomas Windom relayed that the U.S. District Court in Columbia had issued a search warrant which authorized the review of the phone’s contents and manual screen capture, on July 12.
The filing revealed that agents in West Virginia had the phone and screenshots of some of its contents.
Eastman, who has relentlessly pursued preventing prosecutors from prying into his phone and messages, first came under immense scrutiny during the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s investigation.
His text messages and emails were sought because investigators believed he had orchestrated a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results, something Pence didn’t follow.
Wednesday’s filing was made in New Mexico because Eastman had filed a suit there, urging a judge to order the DOJ to return his phone and destroy any records they acquired from it, in addition to blocking investigators from gaining future access to it.
Eastman’s suit was denied, but the judge did order the DOJ to provide an update on the phone’s location and the second search warrant.
