A senior White House lawyer expressed concerns to President Trump’s advisers and attorneys about the president signing a sworn court statement verifying inaccurate evidence of voter fraud, according to emails from December 2020 obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: The emails shed new light on a federal judge’s explosive finding Wednesday that Trump knew specific instances of voter fraud in Georgia had been debunked, but continued to tout them both in public and under oath.
- While the judge’s opinion stemmed from litigation related to the House’s Jan. 6 committee, the Justice Department is also conducting a criminal investigation into Trump and his allies’ scheme to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
- Eric Herschmann, the former White House lawyer who cautioned Trump’s outside attorneys about the inaccurate allegations of voter fraud in Georgia, was subpoenaed this summer to testify in the DOJ investigation.
Background: U.S. District Court Judge David Carter is presiding over the House Jan. 6 committee’s attempt to subpoena communications from conservative lawyer John Eastman, one of the architects of the scheme to overturn the election.
- After a review of hundreds of emails that Eastman claimed were privileged, Judge Carter determined some should be turned over to the Jan. 6 committee — finding they were “sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
- In one email cited in Judge Carter’s opinion, Eastman told Trump’s team that the president had been made aware that some of the allegations and evidence of voter fraud used in a Georgia election lawsuit were inaccurate.
- That suit was later moved to federal court. “For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate,” Eastman wrote, according to the judge’s order.
Worth noting: The lawsuit that was filed in federal court contained a footnote stating that Trump was only relying on voter data that was provided to him, and that it was subject to changes based on the outcome of government investigations.
- “But, by his attorneys’ own admissions, the information provided to him was that the alleged voter fraud numbers were inaccurate,” Judge Carter wrote in his opinion, accusing Trump’s lawyers of seeking to “disclaim his responsibility over the misleading allegations.”
Driving the news: The emails obtained by Axios — which have also come to the attention of the Jan. 6 committee and DOJ, according to a source with direct knowledge — show correspondence between Herschmann, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and conservative activist and outside attorney Cleta Mitchell. Trump’s executive assistant Molly Michael is CC’ed.
- On Dec. 30, Mitchell emailed Meadows what she described as an “almost final version” of a lawsuit set to be filed in federal court against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “Remember, we were talked into this by others,” wrote Mitchell, a key player in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
- The next day, Mitchell sent a draft of the lawsuit to Herschmann in response to apparent concerns he had raised, writing: “This is the version from John Eastman with your edits.”
- Herschmann responded: “I will review now. I didn’t send John edits, I explained that I was concerned about the President signing a verification about facts that may not be sustainable upon detailed scrutiny. I think that we should limit specific factual ‘number’ allegations to those that are necessary i.e., those allegations that demonstrate that the decision is outcome determinative.”
What they’re saying: A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment. But in a post on Truth Social Thursday, the former president attacked Judge Carter as a “partisan hack” who “shouldn’t be making statements…
Read More: Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann warned against signing flawed Georgia lawsuit