House January 6 committee says it has evidence Trump and allies ...

The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol said in a court filing late Wednesday that it had evidence that former President Trump and his allies engaged in a "criminal conspiracy" by trying to block Congress from certifying the election.This is the first time the committee has laid out a potential criminal case against Trump.The committee's filing represented a significant moment in its investigation, because it included rare disclosures of its findings. Eastman has refused to provide documents to the committee and invoked attorney-client privilege, saying he was Trump's lawyer.The document details how, as Trump and his associates pushed allegations of voter fraud in the weeks following the 2020 election, the former president was told multiple times they weren't supported by evidence.The filing also describes how Eastman advised Trump to "press an unconstitutional plan" and sought to persuade Vice President Pence and his advisers to go along with the effort. "The facts we've gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman's emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power," they said in a statement.The panel said evidence showed a "good-faith basis for concluding" that the former president illegally sought to obstruct an official proceeding and "did so corruptly.""(E)vidence and information available to the Committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that Plaintiff's legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities," lawyers for the committee argued in their court filing Wednesday evening.The committee said in the filing that Eastman spoke at the rally on the morning of January 6, and alleges he was not simply serving as an adviser, but participated in "spreading proven falsehoods to the tens of thousands of people attending that rally, and appears to have a broader role in many of the specific issues the Select Committee is investigating."Thompson and Cheney said in a statement late Wednesday that, as a judge noted in a previous hearing, "Dr. Eastman's privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation."The committee explains that communications between a lawyer and client are not privileged from disclosure if a "client consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud or crime."In a statement, Eastman's attorney, Charles Burnham, said: "Like all attorneys, Dr. John Eastman has a responsibility to protect client confidences, even at great personal risk and expense.