US District Judge David Carter was mocked by Donald Trump in a Thursday morning post on the ex-president’s Truth Social app
Donald Trump lashed out at California judge David Carter on Thursday after accusing the former president of knowing he had pledged his name to false election fraud claims over the 2020 census in Georgia.
He accused the Bill Clinton-appointed lawyer of making “very nasty, misguided and misinformed statements” in a setting where Trump cannot represent himself — in pending lawsuits for conspiracy theorist attorney John Eastman.
The day before, the U.S. district judge issued an 18-page ruling in response to Eastman’s request to block the release of his emails to the House January 6 committee.
He claimed that some of those emails showed Trump was lying to officials when he signed an affidavit confirming data he knew to be incorrect about Georgia’s 2020 election count.
Who is this Clinton-appointed ‘judge’, David Carter, who keeps saying, and sending to everyone, very nasty, misguided and misinformed statements about me on verdicts, or any case (whatever!), currently going on? in California, I don’t know about it — and I’m not represented either,” Trump wrote on his app Truth Social.
“With that being said, please explain to this partisan hack that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen.”
He added: ‘Besides, he shouldn’t make any statements about me until he understands the facts, which he doesn’t!’
Eastman has argued that his emails are protected under attorney-client privilege and may not be transferred.
Carter said Wednesday that the former president had signed an affidavit claiming voter fraud figures in a 2020 election case were accurate, despite being told the numbers were incorrect.
Trump’s attorney John Eastman has fought his way through the courts to avoid handing over his emails to the Jan. 6 commission. On Wednesday, a California judge ruled that eight must be filed
On Wednesday, Carter broadly agreed, but found eight emails in particular were relevant and had to be handed over.
He found they were for the promotion of a crime — one of the few times those legal safeguards can be lifted.
Carter wrote that Eastman warned Trump that the data he used in December 2020 to claim the vote was stolen from him was incorrect.
Trump, Carter wrote, ignored the advice and then lied to authorities by declaring that large-scale voter fraud had taken place.
Meanwhile, Trump was embroiled in more legal drama on Wednesday. The former president was ordered to sit before a statement from the lawyers of writer E. Jean Carroll, an advisory columnist who is suing Trump for defamation after he denied her sexual assault charges.
“On December 4, 2020, President Trump and his attorneys in a Georgia lawsuit alleged that Fulton County falsely counted a number of votes, including 10,315 people who died, 2,560 felons and 2,423 unregistered voters,” Carter wrote.
President Trump and his attorneys then decided to challenge the state court proceedings in federal court and discussed the inclusion by reference of the voter fraud figures alleged in the state’s petition.
Trump called Carter’s statements about him in Eastman’s trial ‘dirty, misguided and misinformed’
“On December 30, 2020, Dr. Eastman’s “concerns” from President Trump’s team “about including specific numbers in the section on felons, dead, relocated, etc.”
The lawyers continued to discuss the president’s resistance to signing ‘when specific numbers were stated.’
As Dr. Eastman explained the next day, ‘Although the President has signed a verification for… [the state court filing] back on December 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and the evidence put forward by the experts) were inaccurate. It wouldn’t be right for him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and inclusion by reference).’
“President Trump and his attorneys eventually filed the complaint with the same incorrect figures without correcting, clarifying or otherwise altering them.”
Eastman representatives have yet to comment on the order.
Carter said on Wednesday that Trump had “signed a verification swearing under oath” that the inaccurate fraud figures were “true and correct” or “to the best of his knowledge were true and correct.”
“The emails show that President Trump knew the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong, but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and the public,” the judge wrote.
Carter has previously ruled that Eastman and Trump likely committed a felony by trying to pressure his then vice president into obstructing Congress.
The Clinton-appointed judge has previously ordered Eastman to provide more than 200 emails to the commission after the attorney resisted the subpoena.
Carter, who began his career as an assistant district attorney, was the first prosecutor in the case of serial killer William Bonin, also known as “The Freeway Killer,” who was the first to be executed by lethal injection in 1996 in California.
Clinton appointed him to the federal bench in October 1988.
In 2000, he began to preside over the trial of 40 Mexican mafia members – the case would become the longest-running in central California history.
He also awarded more than $88 million in damages in 2002 to Anna Nicole Smith, who was fighting for a portion of the estate left behind by her late billionaire husband, J. Howard Marshall.
The judge said on Wednesday that the vast majority of emails still sought by congressional investigators should not be transferred, as the legal protections given to lawyers and their clients apply to the files.
Carter found that four emails show that Eastman and other attorneys suggested the “primary purpose” of the lawsuits was to delay Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results.
The judge said four other emails “demonstrate an attempt by President Trump and his lawyers to file false claims in federal court with the aim of delaying the Jan. 6 vote.”
Trump and his allies have filed more than 60 lawsuits against the 2020 election, which Biden won, with some complaints of voter fraud with no evidence to support those claims.
Those cases were overwhelmingly dismissed by judges, some of which were appointed to federal courts by Trump.
The January 6 select committee voted last week to subpoena Trump in her investigation. It plans to release a report on its findings in the coming weeks.