The United States Department of Justice said on Wednesday that it has secured a warrant to examine the phone of John Eastman, an attorney for Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign who spoke at a rally before to the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6.
In June, federal investigators obtained a warrant that authorised them to grab Eastman’s phone and took it as a result of that authorization. In order to examine the contents of the phone, they need a second warrant.
The assistant US attorney, Thomas Windom, stated in a document that was filed with the US district court in New Mexico that on July 12th, the US district court for the District of Columbia issued a search warrant that authorised the review of the contents of the phone as well as the manual screen capture of the device.
He said that federal authorities in northern Virginia were in possession of the phone as well as screenshots of some of the information contained on it.
After the former president erroneously declared that he had won the 2020 election, Eastman has been the subject of severe scrutiny as part of the investigations into the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. At the gathering when Trump delivered his heated address, Eastman was one of the speakers. Trump had said that there was electoral fraud and urged his followers to march on the Capitol.
Additionally, Eastman prepared a letter in which he outlined the many ways in which Mike Pence might, in Eastman’s opinion, prevent official congressional certification of Trump’s re-election defeat. The vice-president at the time did not take Eastman’s recommendation into consideration.
The paperwork was submitted on Wednesday in New Mexico because Eastman had already filed a lawsuit in that state, seeking a court to compel the justice department to return the phone, erase documents, and prevent investigators from accessing the phone. The paperwork was submitted on Wednesday.
The motion was turned down by the judge, but he gave the government an order to provide an update to the court by Wednesday about the whereabouts of the phone and the progress of a second search warrant.