Former President Donald Trump personally engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the very nation he led and then obstructed an official proceeding of Congress, the Jan. 6 Committee argued in a legal brief Wednesday night.
Although its year-long investigation isn't over, the House panel investigating the Jan.6 insurrection revealed its most extensive and damning conclusions yet against the former president in court filings released Wednesday night, extensively documenting how Trump engaged in illegal behavior to try and stay in power.
The committee was responding to arguments from Trump legal adviser, Professor John Eastman about why his communications with the former president ought to be privileged and confidential. But in refuting those arguments, the committee tipped its hand on a much larger question: Did Trump break the law?
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The Jan. 6 panel laid out reasons why it thinks the answer to that question is decisively yes.
“Evidence and information available to the committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that [Eastman’s] legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities,” the committee said in the filing.
The sweeping document coalesces much of the evidence that has slowly trickled out in the news over the past year, as witnesses speak to investigators, cooperators come clean, and accomplices make bewildering confessions to reporters.
Lawyers are not allowed to give advice in furtherance of a crime, and legal advice based on that premise is not privileged.
"The defendant obstructed, influenced or impeded, or attempted to obstruct, influence or impede, an official proceeding of the United States, and… the defendant did so corruptly," the Jan. 6 Committee said.
The panel also argued that it has "a good-faith" basis to conclude the former president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.
"The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, Plaintiff [Eastman], and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort," the legal brief released Wednesday said.
In the court filing, the committee asserted that Trump repeatedly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to commit a crime by refusing to count electoral votes during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
Importantly, the committee’s court filing also seemed to clarify the eyebrow-raising comments made in December by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), one of the two GOP members on the congressional panel.
“Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’ official proceeding to count electoral votes?” Cheney asked.
In Wednesday’s filing, the committee explained that Congress’ counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6 was indeed an “official proceeding”—meaning that Trump potentially faces the same criminal charge that federal prosecutors have used against more than 240 insurrectionists.
Trump and Eastman “engaged in an extensive public and private campaign to convince the Vice President to reject certain Biden electors or delay the proceedings, without basis, so that the President and his associates would have additional time to manipulate the results,” the committee asserted.
As if that wide-ranging conspiracy weren’t enough, the committee detailed a third prong in the former president’s plan to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
Court filings document how “Mr. Trump’s team also mounted an effort to obtain false election certificates purporting to demonstrate that the electors of seven States were committed to President Trump rather than President Biden.”
The committee has gathered evidence about the concerted effort to have Republican Party members in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin hold dubious meetings and submit fake electoral college certificates declaring Trump the actual winner of those states. And it described how witnesses so far are pointing the finger directly back to Trump.
“Michigan Republican Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock publicly stated, for example, that she ‘fought to seat the electors’ because ‘the Trump campaign asked us to do that,’” the committee explained, adding that it “has deposed several signers of these false certificates, and plans to interview others.”
The former president’s official office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
This entire legal ordeal is a direct result of Eastman’s attempts to keep evidence away from the committee. He has tried to cite the theory that Trump retains some sort of executive privilege after leaving office—an argument that, in a separate case, did not convince the Supreme Court.
The committee is also flexing its muscle by repeatedly referencing how it has gathered voluminous evidence from witnesses—even from Eastman’s own emails at Chapman University, where he was a law professor.
The committee documented how Eastman allegedly sent an email to Pence’s lawyer, Gregory Jacob, during the violent mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol building in which he continued to play the role of the president’s attack dog.
“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote.
Eastman did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.
