It feels a bit like the people surrounding Trump were lulled into thinking that they, too – as former members of the inner-Trump team, would get some “Judge Cannon” treatment with respect to the FBI’s investigations. That is not happening because there’s only one Judge Cannon (so far). Just as Mike Lindell did not win a motion to get his phone back, neither did John Eastman, who lost decisively yesterday in federal court in New Mexico, meaning the court did as it would with just about any case with such a motion.
From Politico:
A federal judge on Friday denied an effort by John Eastman, the attorney who helped devise Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election, to reclaim his phone from the Justice Department.
New Mexico-based Senior U.S. District Court Judge Robert Brack ruled that Eastman had failed to show that the government’s seizure of his phone — by FBI agents who confronted him outside a restaurant in June — had caused “irreparable harm.”
Brack noted that Eastman had obtained a replacement phone and that his desire to bar the government from combing the contents of his seized phone was not a sufficient reason to reclaim it from the Justice Department. “Eastman wholly fails to show and in fact disclaims any need for the actual phone,”
Right.
Well, when you are claiming that you will experience irreparable harm without your phone back, it’s probably best to demonstrate why you need that phone in particular. Eastman didn’t have any evidence or even an argument that he needed the phone that was seized.
He did make arguments about privileged material, as Trump did in Florida, but unlike Judge Cannon, this judge determined that the FBI had set up a process to avoid those concerns. The FBI has a team that reads everything and picks out the privileged material, then hands what remains on to the investigators, who will never know what was taken out. The judge ruled that the process cured any claim to privilege.
Last, Eastman said that the seizure of his phone “chilled free speech,” which is remarkably self-absorbed. A meth dealer could make the same argument. The judge in New Mexico punted it right back to Eastman and said to take up any First Amendment arguments with the DC District Court that issued the search warrant.
The FBI is investigating the “alternate electors” prong in attempting to steal the election. Eastman’s phone is almost surely a treasure trove of texts about who did what and where which is surely the reason that Eastman wants it back. Unfortunately, there is only one “Judge Cannon,” and she wasn’t sitting on the bench in the New Mexico courtroom. Eastman faced a normal senior district court judge who dealt with the issue easily.
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