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FBI seizes cell phone of former Trump lawyer John Eastman WASHINGTON – A conservative lawyer who aided former President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 election results and who has been repeatedly referenced in House hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol said in a court filing Monday that federal agents seized his cell phone last week.
John Eastman said the agents took his phone as he left a restaurant last Wednesday evening, the same day law enforcement officials conducted similar activity around the country as part of broadening probes into efforts by Trump allies to overturn the election.
The move underscores federal investigators’ interest in the unsuccessful schemes advanced by Trump advisers to help keep the Republican president in power in the period between the November 2020 election and the riot at the Capitol two months later, when Trump loyalists stormed the building to halt Eastman said the agents who approached him identified themselves as from the FBI but appeared to be serving a warrant on behalf of the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, which he contends has no jurisdiction to investigate him since he has never worked for the department. He said the cell phone that was seized contains emails that have been the subject of a months-long dispute between him and the House panel.
“That litigation has received extensive media attention, so it is hard to imagine that the Department of Justice, which apparently submitted the application for the warrant at issue here, was not aware of it,” wrote his lawyers, Charles Burnham and Joseph Gribble.
The action was disclosed in a filing in federal court in New Mexico in which Eastman challenges the legitimacy of the warrant, calling it overly broad, and asks that a court force the federal government to return his phone. He says the warrant does not specify any particular crime for which evidence from the phone might be relevant.
The filing does not specify where exactly agents seized his phone, though the warrant was signed by a federal magistrate judge in New Mexico and footage of the seizure aired by Fox News on Monday night describes it as having occurred in the city of Santa Fe. Lawyers for Eastman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Federal agents investigating the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot last week served a raft of subpoenas related to a scheme by Trump allies to put forward alternate, or fake, slates of electors in hopes of invalidating the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Also that day, agents searched the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, a Trump Justice Department official who encouraged Trump’s challenges of the election results.
A spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office declined to comment.
Eastman, who last year resigned his position as a law professor at Chapman University, has been a central figure in the ongoing hearings by the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol, though he has not been among the witnesses to testify.
It loses something without the video, as two thug FBI agents seize his phone and search Eastman, as he asks politely over and over for a legal warrant before searching him and taking his phone, and they ignore him. A warrant the agents never provide, and therefore illegally access the confidential communications on his phone that lawyer Eastman has with his clients,. And violate Eastman's civil rights to his own private communications, constitutionally private unless court ordered with a legal warrant based on evidence that would require him to disclose them. A WARRANT THAT WAS NEVER PROVIDED BY THE FBI AGENTS.
This, after about 2 weeks ago, Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro was arrested impromptu at an airport, and [a 70-year old man]
was escorted out in leg irons, and was not even provided with the opportunity to call a lawyer for legal representation throughout the arrest. A call to a lawyer Navarro requested, but was never provided.
And Roger Stone.
And Michael Caputo.
And Gen Michael Flynn.
And George Pappadapoulos.
And Paul Manafort.
All maliciously prosecuted, with egregious violations of law and FBI/DOJ procedure and biased judges and biased juries in every case.
While the same Democrat-loyalist FBI and DOJ scuttle the evidence against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Anthony Weiner, Lois Lerner and any other Democrats. There's a lot of evidence held by the FBI against these Democrats that has mysteriously just... disappeared.
Under normal procedure, the FBI would call and ask John Eastman or Peter Navarro to surrender to them, to come in and meet the FBI with their lawyer at an appointed time.
The 97% Democrat FBI and DOJ is purposely doing these things to humiliate, terrorize, intimidate and demoralize their Republican opposition.
The FBI has become the KGB enforcement arm of the Democrat party. There is not the slightest illusion by FBI and DOJ at this point of equal justice under the law. They are fully Democrat-owned weapons, used against anyone who dares to dissent.
