A lawyer linked to Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election result said the FBI stopped him outside a restaurant and seized his phone.
In a court filing, John Eastman said he was approached by federal agents on the night of June 22.
Details of the alleged incident were contained in a court file, in which the 62-year-old man was attempting to repossess the property.
“On the evening of June 22, 2022, federal agents served a search warrant on plaintiff as he was leaving a restaurant,” the filing says.
“The petitioner asked to see the order, but the enforcement officer refused. The Petitioner was searched. Petitioner’s phone, an iPhone Pro 12, was seized.”
He added: “Movant was forced to provide biometric data to unlock said phone. Petitioner was not provided a copy of the warrant until after his phone was seized, and even then, only a copy of the search warrant was provided to him, but not the supporting affidavit referenced in she”.
About six federal investigators approached the right-wing attorney in New Mexico as he was leaving a restaurant after having dinner with his wife and a friend, according to court documents, first reported by CNN.
Agents were able to access Mr. Eastman’s email accounts on his iPhone 12 Pro, the filings said.
Eastman, a former law professor at tiny Chapman University in Orange County, California, is said to have been inextricably involved in Trump’s efforts to cling to victory, despite his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
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In the days after his loss and when he was most desperate to turn things around, Trump invited Eastman to visit him in the Oval Office and lay out his theory on how he could still emerge victorious.
His theory, as he outlined in a series of memos, later described by some critics as the “Hit Memos” and based on his alternate reading of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, suggested that the vice president was the final arbiter in cases where there was disagreement over the results, and could oversee the appointment of alternate pro-Trump electors from states where Biden had won.
Working from a room at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC, Eastman and others convinced Trump and some of his associates that, even at this late stage, he could retain the presidency.
Eastman later found himself heading to the so-called Stop the Steal rally in Washington DC on the morning of January 6.
“And all we demand of Vice President Pence is that this afternoon at 1 pm, he allows state legislators to look into this so that we get to the bottom of it and the American people know if we are in control of the direction of our government. , or not,” he said.
As it was, Pence disagreed, and his staff told Eastman he was wrong.
White House counsel Eric Herschmann told the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks last week that he was “very crazy.”
The committee also played a video statement of Mr. Eastman being questioned by investigators on January 6, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment, so as not to incriminate himself. Additionally, the committee heard that Eastman was among Trump loyalists who apologized to the president. He was not granted one.
The search and seizure of Eastman’s phone took place the same day federal agents raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department attorney sympathetic to Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies.
Reference-www.independent.co.uk