(Bloomberg) -- A conservative California lawyer who advised former president Donald Trump on ways to overturn the 2020 election lost a bid to block his emails and other records from being released to a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a request by John Eastman, a former professor at Chapman University School of Law, for a court order declaring the committee's subpoena invalid. Eastman had argued the demand for access to his work emails is a “clear effort to chill the speech” of the Democrat-controlled committee's “political adversaries.”
“The public interest here is weighty and urgent,” U.S. District Judge David Carter in Santa Ana, California, wrote in his ruling. “Congress seeks to understand the causes of a grave attack on our nation's democracy and a near-successful attempt to subvert the will of the voter.”
Read More: Trump and Jan. 6 Rioters Face Broad Legal Threat in New Year
The judge said Eastman can still try to assert attorney-client confidentiality rules with regard to specific records among about 19,000 documents deemed relevant to the committee's probe.
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