Topline
Former Trump attorney John Eastman defended his efforts to block or delay Congress from certifying the 2020 election results in an interview with Fox News Wednesday night, claiming he wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to stop Congress from certifying the votes for a week even as he’s now been indicted in Georgia for his post-election efforts.
Attorney John Eastman talks to reporters after a hearing in Los Angeles on June 20.
Key Facts
Eastman claimed to Fox host Laura Ingraham that he “explicitly” told Pence on January 4, 2021, that rejecting the electoral votes entirely would be “foolish,” but he advocated for the vice president to give state legislators in battleground states “a week to try and sort out the impact” of purported “illegality” in the election results (which there is no evidence to support).
Legal experts on X, formerly known as Twitter, questioned why Eastman would admit to asking Pence to delay the results, given the attorney has been indicted on charges related to his efforts to block Congress from certifying the election results on January 6, 2021.
“He literally just confessed to the crime,” national security attorney Bradley P. Moss wrote, while Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis noted Eastman was “admitting to committing federal crimes on television” and “should keep his mouth shut for his own benefit.”
Eastman has been indicted for racketeering, with the indictment citing his attempts to pressure Pence to reject or delay the results as furthering that alleged crime, and has also been indicted on separate charges for his role in the “fake elector” scheme, in which GOP officials submitted false slates of electors to Congress claiming Trump, rather than President Joe Biden, had won their states, which Eastman and others pushed as a way to help stop the results from being certified.
The attorney’s claim he told Pence that unilaterally rejecting the results would be “foolish” also directly contradicts allegations made in the Justice Department’s indictment against former President Donald Trump for his post-election efforts, MSNBC noted, which didn’t charge Eastman with anything but does identify him as one of Trump’s “co-conspirators.”
The federal indictment alleges Eastman put together a memo on December 23 that encouraged Pence to reject the results before Eastman “asked” Pence on January 4 to “unilaterally reject the legitimate electors from” battleground states or send the results to state legislatures, and that he then met again with the vice president on January 5, where he specifically “advocated” for Pence to reject the electors entirely.
Surprising Fact
In the first part of Eastman’s interview with Ingraham, which aired Tuesday night, Eastman doubled down on his allegations of fraud and pushed back against the suggestion that he advanced the fraud claims knowing they were false, telling Ingraham, “I challenge [prosecutors] to find a single email that supports that.” In fact, an email has already been cited in court as showing that, in which Eastman acknowledged that fraud claims made in a legal filing were untrue. Trump signed that legal complaint anyway despite Eastman saying Trump had been “made aware” the claims were false, and both the attorney and ex-president were charged in Georgia with filing false documents as a result.
Tangent
Ingraham pushed back during the interview against Eastman’s claims of “illegality” in the election, noting, “There were obviously irregularities that everyone had seen, but whether it rose to the level of changing the outcome of the election … the argument was ultimately a difficult one to make.” She also noted Tuesday that she “ha[sn’t] seen” any evidence of fraud. Ingraham’s efforts to refute Eastman’s claims come after Fox paid voting company Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle defamation claims after the company alleged Fox pushed false election fraud claims on the network despite knowing those allegations were false, and as the network still faces a second defamation suit from rival voting machine company Smartmatic.
What To Watch For
Eastman has been indicted on nine charges in Georgia, which he is expected to plead not guilty to, and he has been released on a $100,000 bond after surrendering to authorities. The attorney faces potential prison time if convicted, including a maximum of 20 years for the racketeering charges. Eastman said when he surrendered that he planned to “vigorously contest” the charges against him, claiming the indictment “targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempted here by ‘formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.’”
Key Background
Eastman is one of 19 defendants charged in Georgia for their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election, along with Trump, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and such other high-profile attorneys as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. The 41-count indictment accuses the defendants of constituting a “criminal enterprise” for the purpose of overturning the election, with allegedly unlawful acts that included pressuring state legislators and officials to reject the results, allegedly breaching election equipment and Eastman and others’ attempts to stop Congress from certifying the results. The indictment marks the first criminal charges that Eastman and Trump’s other post-election allies have faced for their attempts to subvert the results. Eastman is also facing ongoing disciplinary proceedings by the California State Bar, which could result in him being disbarred. His disbarment trial resumed proceedings last week.
Further Reading
Laura Ingraham Tells John Eastman ‘I Haven’t Seen’ Any Evidence Of Election Fraud (HuffPost)
Who Is John Eastman? The Attorney At The Center Of Trump’s January 6 Strategy. (Forbes)
