On Wednesday, a lawyer who supported Donald Trump’s allegations of 2020 election fraud testified before a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, where prosecutors are looking into attempts to invalidate the state’s presidential election results.
After his testimony, John Eastman’s legal team claimed that they had urged the former professor of law to raise the Fifth Amendment and use the attorney-client privilege in order to avoid answering questions.
According to attorneys Charles Burnham and Harvey Silvergate, “We counselled our client John Eastman to establish attorney client privilege and the constitutional right to stay quiet when appropriate” in his testimony before the Fulton County special grand jury.
We won’t reveal the details of the testimony or the questions because we respect the grand jury’s need for confidentiality. We appreciate the grand jurors’ efforts and want to thank them.
Prior to Eastman’s testimony, Silvergate told the New York Times that he thinks his client is “certainly a target” in the criminal investigation that is expanding quickly.
The attorney said, “I don’t believe he’s a valid target.” I don’t believe my client will be found guilty of anything,
One of the witnesses whose testimony Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has attempted to force in the case is Eastman, one of several Trump aides, lawyers, and sympathisers.
Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and Trump’s lawyer, testified in mid-August despite being informed that he would be charged with a crime as part of the inquiry.
Republican senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham is contesting the subpoena.
Last week, Willis filed petitions requesting the testimony of many people, including former White House head of staff Mark Meadows and Trump supporter Sidney Powell.
Additionally, Willis wants him to appear, according to conservative lawyer L. Lin Wood Jr., who made this claim this week.
A conversation between Trump and Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2016, is at the centre of Fulton County’s inquiry.
In that conversation, which Raffensperger recorded, Trump pressured him for the precise number of votes required to reverse Biden’s slim win in the state’s electorate and accused him and Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp of “treating the folks of Georgia so poorly.”
“This is all I want to do.” Trump said, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, one more than we have because we won the state.
A judge dismissed Kemp’s attempt to evade his own Willis subpoena on Monday. The governor, who is up for reelection in November against Democrat Stacey Abrams, won’t have to show up until after the election.
Eastman is the brains behind a legal argument that Vice President Mike Pence might unilaterally annul the results of the 2020 election by disqualifying electors from states that President Joe Biden narrowly won.
Then, according to Trump loyalists, regardless of how the citizens of their state voted, GOP-led legislatures in many of those states would return a fresh slate of electors in favour of the former president.
When Pence objected to the position Eastman assigned him, the strategy failed.
The defence team for Eastman charged District Attorney Willis on Wednesday with starting “an unprecedented route of criminalising unconventional or unpopular legal ideas.”
The public breakdown between the former running partners resulted from Pence’s heated argument with Trump on the issue. On January 6, 2021, when a vengeful crowd stormed the US Capitol to prevent the vice president and Congress from recognising Biden’s win, Trump dubbed Pence a “coward.”
It is more probable than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly collaborated to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021, a federal court presiding over Eastman’s legal attempt to slow-walk a subpoena from the House Capitol riot committee said in March.
According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, he earlier warned the Georgia state Senate that there had been “more than enough” unlawful ballots cast for them to overturn the slate of electors from the Peach State.
He said to state legislators, “I don’t believe it’s simply your power to do that; quite honestly, I think you have a responsibility to do so to defend the integrity of the election here in Georgia.”