Eastman gives up fight over phone records release to Jan. 6 committee

John Eastman, a key figure behind former President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results, has dropped his bid to block the release of his phone records to the House Jan. 6 committee.

In a court filing late Tuesday, Mr. Eastman said he would no longer challenge the committee’s subpoena after receiving assurances that the panel is seeking call logs from his carrier, Verizon, and not the content of his communications.

“The Congressional Defendants represented in their motion to dismiss that they were not seeking the content of any of Plaintiff’s communications via the subpoena they had issued to Defendant Verizon,” the filing reads.

Mr. Eastman was a central figure in the committee’s series of public hearings throughout June as the panel unpacked its findings from its nearly yearlong investigation.

The committee said Mr. Eastman was the architect behind the legal and constitutional argument that Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, could delay or overturn the election results during the certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Eastman has been in a bitter back-and-forth with the committee over its requests for months.

Mr. Eastman filed a separate suit in January to block a committee subpoena demanding the release of emails sent between Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021, from his former employer, Chapman University.

He claimed the release of the emails would violate attorney-client privilege. He lifted his challenge to thousands of pages included in the sweep after the judge assigned to the case required that he provide an itemized “privilege log” describing the contents of the withheld documents.

Mr. Eastman is also coming under increased scrutiny from the Department of Justice. Last week, FBI agents seized his phone as part of the DOJ inspector general’s probe into the 2020 election.