Opinion by Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman: A judge’s ruling reinforces the darkest reading of Trump’s coup effort
, siding with the committee’s invocation of the crime-fraud exception, which states that attorney-client privilege can’t shield communications if the attorney is helping his client commit a crime.that Trump’s actions “more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding” — that is, criminal obstruction of the count of presidential electoral votes in Congress. So they fall under the crime-fraud exception and must be turned over.
“The court found that Eastman’s theory about the ECA was so obviously wrong, it wasn’t just a disagreement about the law,” legal scholar Matthew Seligman, anStory continues below advertisement Seligman added that the judge concluded that “in pushing that effort at subversion, Trump was acting outside the law.”
In ordering the release of one particular document — a draft memo that circulated among Trump advisers suggesting an action plan for overturning the election — Carter wrote that “the memo likely furthered the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding.”Judge Carter also wrote that the memo may have advanced another crime, “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” and the ruling makes an extensive argument on why this crime may have been committed.
At this point, it’s hard to see how the Justice Department can tenably refrain from a full criminal investigation into whether Trump broke laws in connection with Jan. 6. To be clear, we don’t know whether the department is currently doing such an investigation, as the department does not typically divulge word of investigations.