Judge: Trump Signed Off on False Election Fraud Allegations

October 20, 2022 Topic: Donald Trump Region: United States Blog Brand: Politics Tags: Donald Trump2020 ElectionGeorgiaFederal JudgeLawsuit

Judge: Trump Signed Off on False Election Fraud Allegations

The federal judge’s opinion stems from ex-Trump attorney John Eastman’s lawsuit against the January 6 House Select Committee.

U.S. District Court Judge David Carter on Wednesday contended in an eighteen-page opinion that former President Donald Trump signed legal documents alleging 2020 voter fraud that he knew were false, according to a new Axios report.

The federal judge’s opinion stems from ex-Trump attorney John Eastman’s lawsuit against the January 6 House Select Committee, which is seeking emails from Eastman that he has declined to turn over citing attorney-client privilege.

According to the judge, Eastman noted in one of the emails that Trump was aware that a number of voter fraud cases his team was alleging in a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s election results were “inaccurate.” Trump, however, signed off on the lawsuit, “swearing under oath” that the figures presented were indeed correct.

NBC News reported that in a state court suit in early December 2020, Trump’s legal team alleged that Fulton County, Georgia, “improperly counted a number of votes including 10,315 deceased people, 2,560 felons, and 2,423 unregistered voters.” But on December 30, before the federal filing, Carter said that “Eastman relayed ‘concerns’ from President Trump’s team ‘about including specific numbers in the paragraph dealing with felons, deceased, moved, etc.’”

The next day, Eastman said in an email that “although the President signed a verification for [the state court filing] back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations [and evidence proffered by the experts] has been inaccurate.”

“For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge [and incorporation by reference] would not be accurate,” he continued.

According to Carter, “Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint with the same inaccurate numbers without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing them. … President Trump, moreover, signed a verification swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers ‘are true and correct’ or ‘believed to be true and correct’ to the best of his knowledge and belief.”

Carter also ruled that several other documents must be disclosed due to the fact that they likely suggest that the chief goal of an unspecified legal filing was to delay the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

“In one email, for example, President Trump’s attorneys state that ‘[m]erely having this case pending in the Supreme Court, not ruled on, might be enough to delay consideration of Georgia.’ This email, read in context with other documents in this review, make clear that President Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the January 6 congressional proceedings through the courts,” the judge wrote.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Finance and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters.