They aren’t winning this.
On Friday (May 6), the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot revealed the panel’s intention to stop pursuing nearly 14,000 pages of documents from conservative lawyer John Eastman.
In court filings, the panel’s legal team revealed that after Eastman handed over 15,616 pages of documents and a consolidated log highlighting 20,110 pages of communication covered by attorney-client privilege, the panel would no longer be requesting an additional 13,929 pages of documents.
The court filings also revealed the panel would be placing a request for a separate 3,236 pages on hold, but still stood by “its objections to the remaining 721 documents.”
Anticipating an objection by Eastman, the committee’s legal team asked the court to review the 721 contested documents. This signals they could be attempting an expedited briefing schedule.
In a court filing first reported on by POLITICO, lawyers for Eastman responded: “Without knowing which documents remain at issue, [Eastman] is unable to offer a position on the continuing need for discovery, an appropriate briefing schedule, or whether further narrowing of the disputed privilege issues may be possible.”
Eastman’s lawyers also called the request for an expedited briefing schedule “premature,” saying that Eastman would work with the committee to “narrow the issues” but highlighted that it remains a possibility “that novel legal issues may remain to be briefed to the Court.”
Eastman has remained a central figure in the committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 riots as he was allegedly involved in developing a plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results.
