Justice Department subpoenas former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann

During the tumultuous last weeks of Trump’s time period, Herschmann clashed with different aides and advisers who pushed the defeated president to battle the election outcomes. He was additionally current for most of the most consequential conferences in that time frame. Among them was a high-stakes assembly the place a lot of the Trump Justice Department’s high brass threatened to resign slightly than work beneath a colleague who needed to advance spurious claims of widespread voter fraud.

Herschmann additionally sparred with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn once they urged Trump to have the navy seize voting machines. The Jan. 6 choose committee has aired quite a few parts of his testimony to their panel, which is blunt and typically darkly amusing.

A spokesperson for Herschmann declined to remark. The Justice Department declined to remark.

In his testimony to the choose committee, Herschmann described lambasting Jeffrey Clark, then a high Justice Department lawyer, throughout a White House assembly on Jan. 3, 2021. At that point, Clark was urging Trump to take away then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and provides him the job.

Clark had inspired his DOJ colleagues to ship letters to state legislators saying the division had discovered regarding proof of voter fraud within the 2020 election. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, nonetheless, had stated the division discovered no proof of fraud that might have swung the election. Under these circumstances, Clark’s plans so involved his colleagues that lots of them warned Trump in that Jan. 3 assembly that they’d stop if he gave Clark the highest job.

Herschmann later recalled to the choose panel that he discovered Clark’s concept to be “asinine” and dryly introduced up Clark’s previous as an environmental lawyer.

“I thought Jeff’s proposal — Clark’s proposal was nuts,” Herschmann informed the committee. “I mean this guy, at a certain point, ‘Listen, the best I can tell is the only thing you know about environmental and elections challenges is they both start with E. And based on your answers tonight, I’m not even certain you know that.’”

Herschmann additionally informed the choose panel a few contentious cellphone name he had on Jan. 7, 2021, with Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman. In the decision, Eastman mentioned plans to maintain pursuing Trump’s efforts to reverse the election — regardless of the violence of the day past’s Capitol riot.

“And I said to him, ‘Are you out of your F-ing mind?’” Herschmann informed the panel. “I said, ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition.’”

Eastman lastly stated these phrases, in keeping with Herschmann.

“I said, ‘Good, John. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: Get a great F-ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it,’” Herschmann added. “And then I hung up on him.”