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10 26

prominent Republicans and key allies of President Donald Trump are supporting John Eastman’s bid to get the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to overturn his disbarment — and there’s a chance the nation’s highest court could take up the case.

Eastman is a longtime conservative attorney and Trump ally whom the California Supreme Court in April permanently barred from practicing law in the Golden State over his direct involvement in the president’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Among the people now going to bat for Eastman are Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and a coalition of former Trump attorneys who helped his 2020 election subversion effort: anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell, former One America News Network reporter Christina Bobb, recently departed U.S. Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin, lawyers Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, and others.

In September, Eastman asked the nation’s highest court to consider overturning his disbarment because, he argued, the California Supreme Court’s ruling violated his First Amendment rights and “embraces the use of the bar disciplinary process as a politicized weapon.”

His supporters have also embraced that argument.

“That whole proceeding in CA is a travesty and must be reversed,” Mitchell, who leads the anti-voting Election Integrity Network, wrote on social media. “SCOTUS should put a stop to this abuse of the bar disciplinary process being used as a partisan political weapon. This is a well funded, leftwing coordinated conspiracy and SCOTUS needs to address it.”

But Eastman wasn’t disbarred for his opinions. He was the key architect in the election subversion effort, drafting two controversial memos that presented ways in which Trump could remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election. The second memo was a six-page document that advocated persuading Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the electoral votes for Joe Biden in seven key states.

The plan hinged, in part, on the fringe independent state legislature theory, which posits that only the legislature can set the rules for federal elections, including how presidential electors are chosen.

Pence rebuffed Eastman’s scheme, acknowledging he had no authority to overturn the election. Trump’s efforts to cling to power then faltered, but they nonetheless birthed wide-ranging conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen, which culminated in a deadly riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack, Eastman sought a pardon from Trump, even though he hadn’t yet been charged with any crime.

“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman wrote in an email to Trump allies.

These efforts led the State Bar Court of California to recommend disbarring Eastman in 2024, charging him with one count of “failing to support the Constitution and laws of the United States,” two counts of “seeking to mislead a court,” six counts of “moral turpitude by making various misrepresentations” and, finally, two counts of “moral turpitude.”

Eastman appealed the State Bar Court’s ruling to the state’s highest court, which upheld his disbarment.

In a statement, the American First Policy Institute (AFPI) — a right-wing think tank that filed a brief on behalf of the former Trump attorneys — said that the Court’s “decision could mark a critical step toward ending the political weaponization of the legal profession and restoring fairness and independence to attorney disciplinary proceedings.”

“This case is ultimately about the inherent fairness of state systems regulating attorney conduct and to the extent those systems can be influenced by partisan organizations. Dr. Eastman represented President Trump in election integrity litigation challenging aspects of the 2020 presidential election,” AFPI added. “As a result, he was targeted by leftist advocacy organizations seeking to strip him of his license to practice law simply because they opposed his political viewpoint and his client, President Donald J. Trump.”

In total, 14 briefs were filed with the Court supporting Eastman’s bid to get his law license back. On social media, Eastman wrote that the briefs support his argument that the California Supreme Court had violated his First Amendment rights.

“Collectively, they tell a powerful story both of the First Amendment violations we’ve raised but also of the broader risk posed by barfare, particularly in intensely partisan election disputes,” Eastman wrote.

Popular with conservatives, the term “barfare” refers to the purported use of state bar disciplinary proceedings to punish lawyers who represent politically controversial clients.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday asked the State Bar of California for a response, which means at least one justice was interested enough in the case to want more information from the state.

The nation’s highest court asking the California Bar to respond does not necessarily mean it will grant Eastman’s request to review the case — at least four justices need to sign on for that to happen.

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AN 8 26

An Arizona judge who has previously expressed sympathy for President Donald Trump's election deniers just delivered a major blow to them.

A judge in Arizona — who already dismissed charges against Trump allies for their role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results — has rejected their effort to block the state from trying to re-indict them," tweeted Politico journalist Kyle Cheney on Tuesday.

In his ruling, Judge Sam J. Myers argued that "the Court has considered the requests for a dismissal with prejudice contained in the Defendants’ responses to the State’s Motion to Dismiss and in Defendant John Eastman’s Motion to Dismiss Pursuant to A.R.S. §13-12-751(B) and the joinders thereto. Defendants have cited, among other factors, the passage of time, the amount of money spent, the stress caused to the Defendants, fundamental fairness, and the interests of justice."

He concluded, "While the Court does not discount the significance of those circumstances, the Court finds that the interests of justice do not require a dismissal with prejudice."

This continues a pattern of Trump and his supporters being disappointed in the courts. More than 20 judges from both parties have unanimously rejected his efforts to force states to share voter information with him, characterizing his efforts as a threat to democracy and the separation of powers between the federal government and states. Trump's politically-motivated prosecutions have also decimated the judiciary's trust in his Department of Justice, with experts saying that many suspect his prosecutors lie to the courts in order to do the president's bidding.

“Ordinarily, the first order of business would be restoring DOJ's political independence and restoring DOJ's credibility in the courts, but it doesn't seem that Blanche is super interested in either of those,” CNN legal analyst Elie Honig told CNN anchor Brianna Keilar on Monday. “Those are the two biggest issues facing the department right now — the fact that they have undertaken and are still in the midst of several prosecutions aimed at people, in large part or entirely, because they are political enemies of the president.”

This leaves the door wide open for prosecutors to bring fresh charges against the defendants, extending a costly and stressful legal battle they desperately hoped to escape. Legal experts note that this decision highlights a growing fatigue among judges who are increasingly unwilling to shield political actors from accountability. As public confidence in the justice system wavers amid accusations of political bias, this ruling serves as a stark reminder that even sympathetic courts draw a hard line at stopping active prosecutions. The defense now faces a steep uphill climb to avoid a second round of indictments in Arizona.

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Patrica Calhoun @ Westworld: The hand that rocks the cradle of birthright citizenship

John Eastman's name doesn't appear in Donald Trump's latest executive orders, but his fingerprints are all over them.

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MMA

Election deniers push conspiracy theories about primaries in GOP-run Texas

QAnon figure Juan O. Savin: “People were just floored by what was going on” in Texas with the “massive cheating”

Written by Alex Kaplan

:{Published 04/20/26

Election deniers have been targeting this year’s primary and special elections in Texas, claiming there has been “massive” fraud and cheating.

Attorney Peter Ticktin, activist Linda Szynkowicz, QAnon influencer Wayne Willott, and others who promoted false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential contest are now claiming on social media and on podcasts that in Texas, votes “got switched,” people used “ghost voting IDs,” and they found “cloned voters.”

For years, right-wing media and politicians have been pushing conspiracy theories about supposed election fraud across the country, and recent claims seem to be part of an apparent effort to undermine the 2026 midterm elections.

Election deniers are now targeting elections in GOP-run Texas}:

On March 3, the Republican and Democratic parties in Texas held primary elections for various elected offices throughout the state. Among the notable primary wins were Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defeating challenger Pete “Doc” Chambers for the GOP gubernatorial nomination and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico besting U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. Texas also held a special election in January for what The Texas Tribune reported was a “solidly red Texas Senate seat,” with Democrat Taylor Rehmet winning the seat in a “stunning special election upset.”

Republicans have full control of the Texas government, and a Republican-appointed secretary of state serves as the state's chief election officer.

## Election deniers claimed “massive fraud” happened during the recent Texas primary and special elections

Multiple prominent election deniers have claimed that there was “massive fraud” and “massive cheating” that tainted the Texas primary and special elections and that they “should not be certified.” They pushed a variety of conspiracy theories, claiming votes “got switched,” that there were “ghost voting IDs,” and that they found “cloned voters”:

- During several podcast appearances, Peter Ticktin, an attorney and commentator with a history of promoting election fraud claims, said that “we better start investigating what happened in the Texas primaries.” He invoked a longstanding conspiracy theory that Venezuela is connected to supposed election fraud, saying voting machines somehow controlled by Venezuela switch votes and “this is how they have control of the outcome of the elections.” He also alleged that 21st Congressional District candidate Weston Martinez found “modified duplicates” in the voter rolls after the first day of voting during this year’s GOP primary and later found that the duplicates in the rolls had been “changed to other names” or “they got rid of them because he was on to it.” Ticktin continued, “One way or the other, these machines are now in play picking the candidates … which we are going to be voting for come November.”

A show host asked if the Texas gubernatorial primary was “an Antrim County situation,” referring to a Michigan county where some falsely claimed that machines changed votes in 2020, and asked if votes for Chambers and Abbott “got switched.”

“Our election system is entirely compromised,” Ticktin replied. “The same voter base, the same voter rolls, the same machines can operate on any election in the United States.”

- Fight Voter Fraud Inc. founder Linda Szynkowicz said on her streaming show that in Texas, “they were manipulating the votes as they were coming in the system.”

- Kris Jurski, whom NBC describes as “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories,” suggested on social media that his tool to supposedly detect election fraud also found “cloned voters … in Texas’s latest election.”

- Wayne Willott, a QAnon influencer who goes by “Juan O. Savin,” said during a streaming conversation that “people were just floored by what was going on” in Texas with the “massive cheating.” Willott, who has tried to recruit election denial candidates for positions administering elections, suggested “a restart” for Texas’ primaries, pointing in a separate conversation to “massive fraud.”

:{Video

Citation

From the March 18, 2026, edition of Nino's Corner, streamed on YouTube

- Harry Haury, whom the LA Times described as a “self-proclaimed cybersecurity expert” with “deep ties to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement,” said during right-wing podcast Stern American’s“election integrity call” that Texas’ primaries were “a large mess,” with “hundreds of thousands of votes that are attributed to an individual, and then that individual is deleted from the record.”

He said the elections “appear[ed] to be tampered with,” and the state had “not produced an honest or transparent result,” and therefore it “should not be certified.”

:{Video

Citation

From the March 18, 2026, edition of Stern American, streamed on Rumble

- On his podcast, election denier Joe Oltmann read a social media post from Chambers alleging fraud in his race and other races in the state, both Democratic and Republican, and Oltmann said that it was evidence of “election fraud” and that “everywhere you turn elections are being stolen.”

- John Case — an attorney for former Mesa County, Colorado, Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted for allowing unauthorized access to county voting equipment over election fraud claims — claimed during another Stern American “election integrity call” that “Bexar County in the Texas primary” featured “some kind of illegal interference in the list of people who voted.” Case, whom Colorado's The Daily Sentinel described as an “election conspiracy theorist,” has previously claimed that there was a supposed witness who claimed “the software used on Dominion Voting Systems in Colorado has the same basic structure as the Smartmatic software that was used to rig elections in Venezuela.” According to Case, this witness “was a government official in Venezuela whose job was to create the war rooms and situation rooms that were used to monitor the election results and then, when the time was ripe, to inject fake votes into the system so that the government candidate would always win.”

- Additionally, John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who crafted a plan for Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, claimed on Stern American that a January special election for a Texas state Senate seat featured “ghost voting IDs based on actual voter IDs.”

## Yes, this probably sounds very familiar

Right-wing figures and social media users have cried fraud about other recent elections as well. That includes the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, where Republican Kari Lake lost to now-Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election, where then-Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli; and the 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election, where now-Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill defeated Ciattarelli.

## Why do they keep claiming fraud?

Some right-wing media figures are calling for new policies and efforts to prevent supposed election fraud ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The Trump administration has pushed the SAVE America Act, which would curtail voting access, and right-wing media claim Democrats oppose it because they are “cheating.”

Trump’s FBI also raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election center as part of a Justice Department probe of the 2020 election, and Trump released an executive order seeking to limit who is eligible for mail-in voting, drawing praise from election deniers. Some of these activists have also drafted and advocated for a “national emergency” executive order to allow a federal takeover of election processes.

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an 4 26

A Politico Senior Affairs writer reports that the California Supreme Court has declined to reverse the disbarment of conservative attorney John Eastman, one of the co-conspirators in President Donald Trump‘s plan to overturn the 2020 election.

The decision came weeks after Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland ruled Eastman should be removed. Last year, A California appellate court, charged with reviewing recommendations to discipline lawyers in that state, affirmed the findings of a trial judge and recommended that Eastman 'be disbarred from the practice of law in California and that Eastman's name be stricken from the roll of attorneys.'"

Eastman was one of Trump’s lawyers in 2020, and he played a big part in helping Trump try to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, which the former president falsely claims was “stolen” by Joe Biden and Democratic officials. Eastman helped devise a false elector’s scheme involving former Vice President Mike Pence invalidating the 2020 results during a joint session of Congress as it convened to count the electoral votes.

Additionally, Eastman is the attorney behind Trump’s ongoing push to end birthright citizenship in America,

“The idea that birthright citizenship is a false interpretation or recent innovation that warps the intended meaning of the 14th Amendment has been pushed into mainstream Republican circles by the tireless work of John Eastman and the Claremont Institute,” said Bulwark writer Phillip Jaffa last year.

Eastman faced 11 disciplinary charges including violations of California’s business and professions code by making false statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption,” the California State Bar wrote in a filing.

Eastman testified in his defense and asked the state Supreme Court to review the Bar’s decision.

The court disagreed with him.

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AUG 2023 https://www.publicnotice.co/p/jeffrey-clark-eastman-charges-federalist-society

OVERVIEW

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AN 11 25

President Donald Trump went on a Sunday night pardon spree, granting full clemency to at least 77 individuals involved in promoting alternate electors in battleground states after the 2020 election, including former Trump attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to Axios.

Announced by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, the pardons cover potential federal offenses but exclude Trump himself and do not affect ongoing state prosecutions in Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan.

Others who received pardons include attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, attorney and Acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget Jeffrey Clark, and attorney and former Trump strategic advisor Boris Epshteyn.

Legal experts describe the action as largely symbolic, given the absence of federal charges against the recipients, but critics excoriated the pardons on social media.

One wrote on X that this move means the country is "waving goodbye to democracy again."

Chef Courtney Brown wrote that"AmeriKKKa has lost its way! This is an absolute disgrace!"

"The fact that NO ONE will be held to account for conspiring to illegally keep Trump in office is one of the most distressing and infuriating consequences of the 2024 election," posted another critic on X.

An x user by the name of America First Democrat posted, "So basically no one who participated in efforts to illegally overturn the 2020 election can be held accountable? The lawlessness of this administration knows no bounds."

Retired Naval reservist and self-described "JFK Libertarian" David Rouse said, "This only reflects #Trump's total disdain for the #Constitution he swore to "protect, preserve, and defend". Pardoning his accomplices in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 fair election that he lost, makes a mockery of the #Rule_of_Law and endangers us all!"

Tech CEO Simon St-Onge wrote, "When people see injustices, criminals pardoned because they know the leader, they lose faith in the justice system, and take their own defence in to their own hands. That’s a premise for barbarism and violence, and war amongst citizens. We should never tolerate injustice, I pity America, the land of the free is no longer so. It will take years, to make it great again. The USA is alone now, with a few other countries lead by autocratic leaders, demented narcissistic men, like Trump and Putin, devoted to themselves, and themselves alone."

"It's about the political whims of Donald Trump," said MSNBC's justice and intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian.

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OC REGISTER SFORZA

You’ve heard of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “Obama Derangement Syndrome.”

Meet “Eastman Derangement Syndrome”!

“A former colleague of mine wrote me this week with an observation about the lawfare assault I have been battling for four long years,” said a recent fundraising pitch from John Eastman, aiming to offset the $2 million he said his legal defense has cost.

“He said those who are pushing it, especially partisan Democrat prosecutors, suffer from EDS – Eastman Derangement Syndrome…. Indeed, the entire reason I am being persecuted – and prosecuted – by the lawfare left is because of my association with President Trump when I represented him back in 2020 to bring forth challenges to that election….

“Will you step forward with a generous gift of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500 or even $1,000 or more to the John Eastman Legal Defense Fund?”

Not to quarrel with the former Chapman Law dean, but the folks “persecuting” Eastman (in Arizona and California) argue that he’s in the legal crosshairs for committing legal sins, from fashioning dubious plans to help Trump hold on to power in 2020, to testifying inaccurately to state legislatures, to advising others on filing false state electoral certification documents, to riling up the crowd at the “Stop the Steal” rally with “crazy talk” about hidden folders in voting machines and massive fraud that did not, in fact, exist, on Jan. 6, 2021.

The California State Bar charged him with moral turpitude, dishonesty and/or corruption, willful misconduct and/or gross negligence, for trying to reverse the legitimate results of an election and essentially yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Federal Judge David O. Carter concluded it was “more likely than not” that federal crimes were committed in trying to obstruct the congressional count of Electoral College votes.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

Eastman was criminally charged in Georgia and pleaded not guilty, but that case is kaput. He was criminally charged in Arizona and pleaded not guilty, but that case is stalled. His law license is on ice in California and he’s fighting to save it, but it’s an uphill battle to get it reinstated.

“In my view, those most seriously afflicted with EDS are prosecutors in Arizona and California,” Eastman’s email continued. “One wants to put me in prison for decades while the other wants to bar me from ever practicing law and fighting for conservative constitutional principles and the rule of law.”

“These EDS prosecutors, along with others similarly afflicted, have cost me nearly $2 million defending myself. And as it happens, I am in the midst of what could be the final battles in Arizona and California where we’re going toe-to-toe with EDS Democrats in the state Supreme Court of each of these states. These legal battles are difficult and expensive, and I urgently need your help to prevail. My legal defense fund is nearly empty. Please consider a generous donation to help me continue the fight.”

[](https://wpdash.medianewsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/ap-eastman-and-guiliani-.jpg)John Eastman (left) at a rally in support of President Trump in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani (.JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

He signed it, “John C. Eastman, Constitutional Scholar, Former Attorney to President Doanld (sic) Trump.”

Eastman received a federal pardon from President Trump in November — a “Federal Deflection Shield,” some called it — but it cannot protect Eastman from state charges or losing his law license.

Seeking millions

We’ve been trying to keep an eye on Eastman’s fundraising — donations are not tax-deductible — but that has become more difficult as of late.

He began hisappeals on the Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo several years ago, asking for $200,000. That ask rose to $500,000, then to $750,000, and stands now at $1.5 million. GiveSendGo shows a tally of the contributions — along with a public comment thread that sometimes takes on the tenor of holy war — and Eastman has raised shy of $1 million there ($938,800 at this writing). Donations still arrive with encouraging messages like “You are a true patriot!” and “Praying you’ll be vindicated.”

That said, GiveSendGo apparently is no longer the preferred platform. Eastman’s recent requests direct potential donors to a different site, the John Eastman Legal Defense Fund, at https://johneastmanlegaldefensefund.com. That one does notshow a running tally of what’s been donated, and it doesn’t allow public-facing comments. It does, however, restate his case.

Detail of a flyer for a John Eastman event at the CAGOP Convention in Burlingame the weekend of May 17

“Dr. John Eastman, President Trump’s dedicated lawyer and advisor, is facing relentless challenges due to his unwavering commitment to election integrity and constitutional rights,” the site says. “His legal battles have incurred substantial expenses, and he urgently needs your support.”

We asked Eastman and his attorneys how donations are going on this platform. But who’s really eager to talk about money? We haven’t heard back.

Given Trump’s “revenge tour,” the text on this site can be startling reading.

“For the past four years, America’s justice system has become an ‘injustice’ system,” it says. “It has been weaponized and used against political enemies of Joe Biden and the Democrats. There is no person in America outside of President Trump himself who has been more viciously and unfairly targeted by the weaponized justice system than me.

“I’ve had a target put on my back by the despicable Jack Smith, been indicted in two states, and had my law license put on ‘inactive’ status – all by partisan prosecutors…. As America turns a page in Washington, please help me turn a page in battling the lawfare left by stepping forward with a generous donation today to the John Eastman Legal Defense Fund. I urgently need your support….

“America is on a road to being the shining city on a hill that President Reagan so famously and eloquently described. I know that Donald Trump is completely committed to making America great again. As part of that objective, I hope you will help me and President Trump make America JUST again by defeating the lawfare left. Thank you for whatever you can do at this historic moment.”

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rww

07/16/2025

Peter Montgomery

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans while voters were in the process of removing Trump from office in 2020. Barrett cemented the right-wing majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, gave Trump virtually complete immunity for lawbreaking he commits as president, and has generally backed Trump’s assault on the rule of law and the federal government. But all that hasn’t been enough for MAGA hardliners.

Earlier this year, far-right commentators were furious that Barrett did not back Trump 100 percent of the time. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in January, right-wing judicial activist Mike Davis viciously attacked Barrett, repeatedly saying she had her “head up her ass” and calling on her to resign.

After Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts voted in March not to immediately overturn a judge’s ruling overturning Trump’s freeze on nearly $2 billion in foreign aid work that had been approved by Congress and already performed, MAGA activist Mike Cernovich denounced her as “evil” and a “DEI hire,” the latter charge echoed by MAGA influencers Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec. Davis went back on Bannon’s show to repeat his vulgar “head up her ass” comment.

In April, when Barrett partially joined more liberal justices’ dissent over Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants to a gulag in El Salvador, the right-wing hate poured in, with Trump’s online pal “catturd” calling her a “commie” and “an ungrateful POS.”

In recent high-profile cases, Barrett has sided with the rest of the MAGA justices to allow mass firings of federal employees and limit federal judges’ ability to halt lawbreaking policies, including Trump’s assertion that he can by executive order overturn the 150-year-old doctrine of birthright citizenship.

Those votes encouraged right-wing radio host John Frederick to ask MAGA lawyer John Eastman this week whether Barrett is “finally coming around.”

“Well, I think there are a lot of plays going on here,” Eastman responded. “One,” he said with a chuckle, “I think she and her family were being threatened. That was serious. I think as a new justice she’s wanting to make sure that everybody knows she’s her own person, so that was serious.”

Eastman said Barrett has “come around” because “the left has gone so far off the rails” with injunctions against Trump administration actions. He said “the greater the absurdity the more she realized that she needed to join” the MAGA majority.

“These judges who disagree with the agenda that the American people voted for don’t have any authority to block the agenda that the American people voted for unless it’s clearly unconstitutional, and it is not.”

Of course, right-wing legal groups had no issue with nationwide injunctions against Biden administration policies, and in fact actively pursued them. Eastman and the Court’s MAGA justices seem to have discovered a new constitutional doctrine now that judges are ruling against Trump’s policies.

Eastman complained that Democrats in the Senate would block any effort to strip federal courts of their jurisdiction over whole classes of cases and that therefore “it’s up to the Supreme Court to get control of the lower courts under its authority.”

Eastman went further in his criticism of the Court’s liberal justices. When Fredericks asked if Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has written powerful dissents, is “becoming a clown,” Eastman suggested that she has been a clown since her confirmation hearing. Even worse, he accused the dissenting justices who defended the constitutional doctrine of birthright citizenship of using “an old Nazi propaganda tactic” by repeatedly noting that it is long-established law.

Eastman said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the Supreme Court will adopt his opposition to birthright citizenship—and overturn more than 150 years of precedent—when it takes up the substance of the issue during its next term.

Eastman, long associated with the hard-right Claremont Institute, was disbarred in California for what judges have deemed his unethical actions in helping Trump try to subvertthe 2020 election. Eastman helped challenge results in swing states and promoted a strategy to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Eastman helped Trump rile up the crowd at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

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an 6 25

After Donald Trump lost the United States' 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, MAGA attorney and far-right conspiracy theorist John C. Eastman did everything he could to help Trump overturn the election results. Eastman, an aggressive promoter of the Stop the Steal movement, is a close ally of the Claremont Institute — often promoting fringe legal theories that are rejected by traditional conservatives.

Many MAGA Republicans consider Eastman one of the intellectual thinkers of their movement. But he is facing disbarment in California, and according to jurisprudence professor Austin Sarat (who teaches at Amherst College in Massachusetts) and attorney Neil Goteiner, his problems are going from bad to worse.

In an article published by Salon on June 18, Sarat and Goteiner explain, "Friday, June 13, was a truly unlucky day for John Eastman, a key architect of President Trump's plot to disrupt the results of the 2020 presidential election. A California appellate court, charged with reviewing recommendations to discipline lawyers in that state, affirmed the findings of a trial judge and recommended that Eastman 'be disbarred from the practice of law in California and that Eastman's name be stricken from the roll of attorneys.'"

Sarat and Goteiner continue, "The judges found that his work on the 2020 election case was shoddy and deceptive. 'Disbarment,' they said, 'is necessary to protect the public, the courts, and the legal profession.' For any lawyer, this is a professional death sentence. But the court's decision is not only a devastating blow to Eastman, but also, to the Trumpist myth that the 2020 presidential election was stolen…. The Eastman case demonstrates again that misinformation and lies collapse in a courtroom where facts and evidence rule "

IFrame Content

In 2025, Eastman, Sarat and Goteiner observe, continues to claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. And his problems, they point out, are bad news not only for Eastman, but also, for the MAGA legal movement in general.

"Eastman will likely appeal to the California Supreme Court and, if he loses there, eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds," Sarat and Goteiner argue. "It is also possible that when the next Supreme Court vacancy occurs, Trump may nominate Eastman. After all, if we can have a convicted felon in the White House, why not a disbarred, but loyal, lawyer on the nation’s highest court?"

The legal experts continue, "Whatever unfolds for Eastman, and despite the profound damage that Trump's election denialism has done to American democracy, the Eastman case compellingly illustrates Alexander Hamilton’s confidence that this nation is well served by an independent judiciary."

*Austin Sarat and attorney Neil Goteiner's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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rww

06/16/2025

by Kyle Mantyla

Courtney Hagle, Alex Kaplan & Noah Dowe @ Media Matters: Right-wing disinformation machine spins up a false profile of Minnesota shooting suspect

The suspect is reportedly a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community. But as the public waited for more information, conservatives spun a profile of a far-left Tim Walz ally who assassinated Democratic lawmakers over immigration.

David Gilmour @ Mediaite: MN Suspect Vance Boelter’s Chilling ‘Hit List’ Named 70 ‘Targets’ – Including Amy Klobuchar, Ilhan Omar, Abortion Providers

The suspect arrested in the murder of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband reportedly left a chilling “hit list” of potential targets that included Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and the offices of multiple abortion providers.

S.V Date @ HuffPost: Trump Hosts $45 Million Military Parade For Himself Before Underwhelming Crowd

While the parade was ostensibly to honor the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday, and not Trump’s 79th, Vance hyped Trump’s remarks as “the main event” of the night.

Colin Kalmbacher @ Law & Crime: Appeals court affirms disbarment recommendation for Trump attorney John Eastman

The legal disciplinary board for attorneys in California has affirmed a recommendation that former law professor John Eastman be disbarred over his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to favor President Donald Trump.

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump Organization eyes a new Trump-branded wireless service, complete with gold phones

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David Edwards @ Raw Story: ‘I'll have to answer’: Tucker Carlson admits to being ‘dishonest’ and ‘nasty’

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson admitted that he had spent much of his life being dishonest, cruel and nasty.

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TNR

Few Americans, if any, had ever heard of John Eastman before the events of January 6, 2021. The legal architect of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election was hardly a high-profile name, even for those steeped in covering American politics. He was, in many ways, an unknown, pulled by the events and the aftermath of January 6 into the riptides of American history.}:

A handful of analysts and investigators tracing the contours of the American far right, however, knew of Eastman’s work long before the events of January 6, and of the kind of churning, burning illiberalism that brought him into Trump’s orbit. One of those was Katherine Stewart, whose new book, Money, Lies, and God, threads the diffuse movements that have congealed into the authoritarianism at the core of Trumpism.

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

By Katherine Stewart

Buy on Bookshop

Bloomsbury Publishing, 352 pp., $29.99

Stewart first intersected with Eastman not in the aftermath of Trump’s failed insurrection but in 2019, when she tracked him to a tony, rarefied conclave in, of all places, Verona, Italy. Eastman was speaking at the annual conference of the World Congress of Families—a far-right, Russian-American organization dedicated to the abolition of abortion and the buttressing of so-called “traditional values”—regaling his audience with tales of “how secularism, liberalism, and gender confusion are destroying everything good in the world.” The speech, as Stewart writes, revealed Eastman to be “a committed ally of the theocrats.” But there was also “some foundation other than biblical literalism,” Stewart sensed, propelling him and cementing the kinds of illiberal alliances crucial to Trump’s reign.

The search for the broader foundations of Eastman’s and his allies’ beliefs is at the center of Money, Lies, and God, the follow-up to Stewart’s critically acclaimed 2020 The Power Worshippers.That book explored the dogmatism at the core of the American religious right, and how such forces drew American evangelicals further and further into the illiberal abyss. It was, at the time, a signal flare of just how willingly such professedly godly groups could embrace a figure like Trump.

Stewart’s newest book is a continuation of that theme. But after the events of January 6, it was clear that the right had changed. This movement—with all the ideological allies, deep-pocketed donors, and misogynists massing around Eastman, joining him in this antidemocratic fight—presents a new face of the American far right. And it is that edifice that Stewart masterfully details in her new book, explaining not only why these pro-Trump forces have already attempted to drive a stake through the heart of American democracy, but how they will try to do so once again.

Part on-the-ground conversations, part sociological analysis, Money, Lies, and Godis a convincing tour of the mutually reinforcing elements of American reaction:

“apostles” of Jesus, atheist billionaires, reactionary Catholic theologians, pseudo-Platonic intellectuals, woman-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” high-powered evangelical networkers, Jewish devotees of Ayn Rand, pronatalists preoccupied with a dearth of (white) babies, COVID truthers, and battalions of “spirit warriors” who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about undermining democracy at its foundations.

:{:{Trumpism is hardly one thing, even if it is overly reliant on Trump himself. Instead, Stewart uses her deep familiarity with the American far right to chart out what are, by the mid-2020s, the major elements of Trump’s political project, which she describes as the Funders, Power Players, Infantry, Sergeants, and Thinkers. The “Funders” are those within the billionaire class bankrolling the forces below them, using access to effectively bottomless pots of wealth to guide American politics. Some of these names are increasingly familiar, like Leonard Leo, the benefactor who helped steer the Supreme Court picks during Trump’s first term, building out Trumpist allies on the highest court of the land and helping rule in favor of things like all-encompassing presidential immunity, a position once ridiculed when espoused by figures like disgraced Richard Nixon.}:

Leo serves as the chair of CRC Advisors, which, as Stewart writes, “directs over $1 billion in right-wing funding toward reactionary causes.” Nor is Leo alone. There is Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, who helps bankroll think tanks and media outlets. There are even organizations like Opus Dei, a far-right Catholic group that does not publicize its membership rolls. All of them together have access to, and help direct, a greater pile of money than anything hard-right forces in America have ever known. “The decisive development in the first decades of the 21st century was not the alliance between Team Money and Team God but the simple fact that, thanks to escalating inequality, the big money got a lot bigger,” Stewart notes. “What was new was the number of zeroes in the checks—and the extremism of the thinking guiding the money people.”}:

Elsewhere, the “Power Players” Stewart identifies are those just underneath the “Funders,” helping direct some of the ocean of money flooding pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian movements. These managerial types comprise a “tiny elite” who “amass tremendous personal power by mobilizing others around their agendas.” Many of these are well-established figures, “super-lobbyists” like the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed or Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who act as both organizers and mouthpieces for pro-Trump policies. These, Stewart says, are the “operational masterminds of the antidemocratic movement,” putting the funding into action through sponsoring conferences, conclaves, and publications. They are, in effect, middlemen—a kind of managerial class directing America’s antidemocratic turn.

The “Infantry,” meanwhile, is made up of the rank-and-file Trump voters who lap up the kinds of antidemocratic rhetoric spilling out of everything from conspiratorial social media feeds to, now, the White House itself. These are the militias, the Tea Party turned Trumpers, and the assorted flotsam of Trump supporters who launched an attempted insurrection on January 6—and who were all recently pardoned by Trump. They are those who Stewart writes about meeting in Las Vegas in 2023. Alongside a German documentary crew, Stewart joins a swell of Trump backers at the ReAwaken America Tour, a pro-Trump conference-cum-revival that gathers an audience of QAnon supporters, antivaxxers, racists, and conspiracy theorists. Stewart finds the crowd descending into increasing mania, with speakers not only regurgitating the most malign conspiracies they can find but even calling for “Nuremberg trials” for Trump’s enemies, leaving one of the German team members to ask Stewart, “Are we safe here?” }:}:

For those tracing America’s descent into authoritarianism, some of these faces are well known; figures like Reed and Perkins have both been peddling illiberal policies for years, long predating the rise of Trump, and it’s hardly news that Trump’s base is comprised of conspiratorial racists. In that sense, Stewart’s book is treading familiar ground. But it sets itself apart in describing the two remaining groups—the “Sergeants” and the “Thinkers”—and how these two now buttress not just Trump but modern Christian nationalism itself.}:

The “Sergeants” are primarily pastors and related church officials, many of whom have accelerated their rightward lurch in recent years. These groups have ominous, vaguely militaristic names, including things like the Black Robe Regiment and the Watchmen on the Wall. These are the followers of the vengeful God of the Old Testament, believers in the efficacy of retribution. “There is little room for the old ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ trope here,” Stewart writes. Instead, they embody a Christian nationalism that “is not a policy program; it is perhaps best understood as a political mindset.” It is a political proclivity that “includes four basic dispositions: catastrophism; a persecution complex; identitarianism; and an authoritarian reflex.” All of it comprises the kind of kindling from which opposition to democracy, and even support for fascism, can emerge.

Many of these “spirit warriors” found their way to the so-called “Jericho March” in Washington on January 5, 2021. A “combination of nationalism, conspiracism, and demon obsession,” according to Stewart, the rally featured a range of pastors trying to outdo one another in their antediluvian rhetoric. One, Greg Bramlage, claimed they were engaged in a “spiritual battle,” while another, Bishop Leon Benjamin, called for followers to “kill” unspecified “demons.” Another pastor, the Reverend Kevin Jessip, described the rally as a “strategic gathering of men in this hour to dispel the Kingdom of Darkness.” Twenty-four hours later, as Stewart notes, many who prayed under these “Sergeants” took up arms and took the fight directly to the Capitol itself—bringing with them a “large wooden cross,” a separate “flag with a cross,” and banners blaring, “Jesus Saves.”

It is the Claremont Institute where the “erstwhile reverence for America’s founders has been transfigured, with the help of political theorists purloined from Germany’s fascist period, into material support” for Trumpism.

It is the final group, the “Thinkers,” that presents arguably Stewart’s most insightful sections. These are the figures like Eastman and his allies who posit themselves as the ideological, intellectual class crafting the contours of Trumpism—and identifying the kinds of legal cover Trump can use to dismantle American democracy. Much of this cohort can trace directly back to the Claremont Institute, the California-based organization where Eastman remains a senior fellow. As Stewart points out, it is the Claremont Institute where the “erstwhile reverence for America’s founders has been transfigured, with the help of political theorists purloined from Germany’s fascist period, into material support” for Trumpism.

The institute’s modus vivendi centers on the “Straussian man in action”—the man who bends history to his own ends, regardless of the consequence and regardless of democratic legitimacy. Stewart writes:

His mission is to save the republic. He must tell a few lies, yet he is nonetheless a noble liar, at least in his own mind. He acts in the political world, where natural right reigns, and not merely in the legal world where lawyers are supposed to toil. Aware of the crooked timber from which humanity is made, he is prepared to break off whatever branches are needed for the bonfire of liberty.

This core Claremont belief leads to the yearning for a so-called “Red Caesar”—a masculine leader untrammeled by anything like democratic oversight or political pushback, grabbing a society by the throat and forcing it back into a world in which men, and especially white men, are once more restored to the top of America’s sociopolitical hierarchy. Indeed, there is an almost obsessive approach at Claremont to restoring supposed masculinity within American society. Stewart traces this belief system at Claremont—where, she says, all of the board members “appear to be male”—to Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., who wrote a 2006 book called Manlinessand “counts as nobility among Claremont’s extended family.” As Mansfield argued, “gender stereotypes are all true”—including, bizarrely, that women would make bad soldiers because “they fear spiders.”

As Stewart details, Mansfield was “far too sophisticated to openly argue for stripping American women of the rights they have fought for over the past two centuries—but in the private sphere, “those highly accurate stereotypes should reign triumphant.” This belief has seeped into Claremont’s bones and manifested itself at Claremont many times over. There is a 2020 alumnus of their Lincoln fellowship named Jack Murphy who once said that “feminists need rape.”* There was another Claremont official who gave a talk titled, “Does Feminism Undermine the Nation?” There is the promotion of work by an author named Coston Alamariu—better known by his nom de plume “Bronze Age Pervert”—who oozes undiluted misogyny and rails against “the gynocracy.” As Alamariu wrote, “It took 100 years of women in public life for them to almost totally destroy a civilization”—and the only way forward is to “use Trump as a model of success.”

These Claremont-based “Thinkers” also include figures like Curtis Yarvin, who has contributed to the Claremont publication American Mindand “appeared as an honored guest on Claremont podcasts.” Yarvin’s affections for despotism have been widely reported elsewhere, but it is his historical ignorance that highlights just how shallow the Claremont men’s pretensions at intellectualism truly are. Not only does Yarvin preposterously believe that “European civilization” wasn’t responsible for any genocides before the Holocaust—as if genocides in places like the Africa, North America, or even Ireland and Ukraine never existed—but he further maintains that America now needs to collapse into dictatorship in order to rebuild.

The “men of Claremont frame their not-so-hidden longing for revenge as a series of ruminations about the rise of an American Caesar,” Stewart writes. “And when that ‘Red Caesar’ arrives, he can thank the oligarchs for funding his rise, and he can thank the rank and file of the movement for supporting him in the name of ‘authenticity.’ But he would owe at least as large a debt of gratitude to the unhappy men of Claremont, those spurned would-be members of the intellectual elite … for explaining just who he is, and why he should go ahead and blow the whole place up.”

Taken together, Money, Lies, and God paints not only a devastating picture of the state of American democracy (as if one was needed) but one that also contributes texture and context to understanding the current American political moment. The book convincingly argues that, when it comes to figures like Eastman or Leo or any of the men affiliated with the Claremont Institute, calls for dialogue and civility are futile. “In earlier times this may have been sage advice,” Stewart writes. “Today it is a delusion. American democracy is failing because it is under direct attack, and the attack is not coming equally from both sides. The movement described in this book isn’t looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants to burn down the house.” American democracy isn’t simply dying. It is, as Stewart observes, being murdered.

Another revelation from the book, however, is not nearly as ominous. Because the movement comprises so many moving parts, there’s no guarantee that such a constellation of forces can last. Trump remains the glue that holds such a coalition together, with each group—the billionaires and the bullies in the pulpits, the keyboard conspiracists and the misogynists trying to put an intellectual sheen on it all—each seeing, and often getting, what they want with him. But once Trump goes, there’s every reason to suspect that such a coalition will splinter, undone by competing claims. Wide cleavages remain on subjects from China to health care to tax cuts, bridged only through Trump’s person and persona.

This is cold comfort for those hoping for a resuscitation of American democracy anytime soon. Trump has spent the first months in his second term sprinting toward a constitutional crisis, cheered on by the allies he’s found along the way—not least the supposed “Thinkers” claiming intellectual leadership of the movement. For figures like Eastman, it’s not an executive run amok that presents a threat to the core of American democracy but, rather, those who would stand in Trump’s way. The Democratic Party, Eastman said in 2023, is “an existential threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but of the example that our nation, properly understood, provides to the world. That’s the stakes.” From his lips to God’s—or at least Trump’s—ears.

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mma

Russ Vought’s fingerprints are all over Trump’s new federal funding freeze

The Project 2025 architect has long argued in support of the president’s power to impound — that is, refuse to spend — funds allocated by Congress

Written by John Knefel

Published 01/28/25

A new memo issued by the Trump administration directing the federal government to temporarily cease disbursing billions of dollars in funds appears to draw on arguments made by Russ Vought, the president’s selectee to run the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought was a primary architect of Project 2025, a sprawling effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing recommendations for President Donald Trump’s second term. In addition to that role, Vought is also the founder of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has spent over a year arguing that the president can unilaterally refuse to spend funds allocated by Congress, an authority known as the impoundment power that was severely curtailed by Congress in 1974.

The new Trump administration memo was issued by Matthew Vaeth, acting director of OMB pending Vought’s confirmation vote. The document calls for federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the memo states.

Although the two-page memo doesn’t use the term impoundment, law professor Steve Vladeck argued that the Trump administration is claiming “the unilateral power to at least temporarily ‘impound’ tens of billions of dollars of appropriated funds—in direct conflict with Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and in even more flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.” The existence of the document was first reported by journalist Marisa Kabas and later confirmed by The Washington Post and The New York Times. (OMB issued a follow-up memo claiming the freeze does “not apply across-the-board” and withheld funds are “not an impoundment under the Impoundment Control Act.”)

The direct effects of the memo are unknown given its scope and vagueness, but they could be detrimental even if the pause is short-lived.

“Experts said the memo as written was poised to bring a rapid halt to scores of federal functions, from assistance to homeless shelters to financial aid for college students,” the Post reported. “Health grants distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state aid for disaster reconstruction, might face delays.”

The memo appears to exempt Social Security and Medicare recipients, and it says the halt “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals.” It isn’t clear whether Medicaid recipients will be affected, although some early reports indicated that payments had been disrupted.

The New York Times additionally reported that transportation funding and loans to small businesses could also be affected. In a statement to the Times, Diane Yentel, the chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits, warned: “From pausing research on cures for childhood cancer to halting food assistance, safety from domestic violence and closing suicide hotlines, the impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives.”

HuffPost reported already that some payments for Head Start — which funds preschool for low-income families — are at risk of being delayed. HuffPost also reported that officials at Meals on Wheels, the food program for elderly Americans, are worried they could face funding disruptions.

Vought and his think tank pushed for a radical interpretation of the impoundment power for years prior to Trump’s election.

In June 2023, Vought posted on X (formerly Twitter), “Making Impoundment Great Again!” Days later, the Center for Renewing America’s X account wrote that “the impoundment power is our secret weapon to totally dismantle the WOKE & WEAPONIZED federal bureaucracy.” The CRA post linked to a Real Clear Politics article quoting Vought as saying, “When you think that a law is unconstitutional” — referring to the Impoundment Control Act — the response should be to “push the envelope.”

In July 2023, CRA senior fellow Jeffrey Clark — who as a DOJ attorney attempted to overturn the 2020 election by pushing a fake elector scheme at the end of Trump’s first term — appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room to argue against the Impoundment Control Act.

“So what I’m working on, essentially, are the constitutional arguments for why that was wrong and various ways in which the Impoundment Control Act is just flatly unconstitutional,” Clark said.

Video

From the July 3, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Vought continued to beat the drum months later.

“The loss of impoundment authority — which 200 years of presidents enjoyed — was the original sin in eliminating the ability for a branch-on-branch to control spending,” Vought said the following February on Fox Business.

Video

From the February 12, 2024, edition of Fox Business' Kudlow

In June 2024, the Center for Renewing America released a white paper arguing that the Impoundment Control Act — passed following President Richard Nixon’s refusal to spend funds for environmental, transportation, and educational priorities — is unconstitutional and a break with legal precedent. The authors of that paper later wrote articles for The Hill and right-wing blog The Federalist making similar claims.

Vought highlighted the centrality of the impoundment power to his think tank’s project. “Why did we found the Center for Renewing America?” he wrote on X. “To write papers like this.”

During Trump’s first term, he attempted to unilaterally withhold roughly $400 billion in foreign aid funding for Ukraine, leading to his first impeachment for violating the impoundment law.

During Vought’s recent confirmation hearing to serve as director of OMB during Trump’s second administration — a job he also held during Trump’s first term — Vought refused to promise to follow the Impoundment Control Act on the grounds that both he and Trump believe it is illegal.

Last August, Vought was filmed in an undercover video claiming that he and his Project 2025 collaborators had written “about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature” in preparation for a possible Trump victory. He said in the video that one of his goals is to “end multiculturalism” in America.

The OMB memo has triggered a massive reaction across the political spectrum. Bannon celebrated the move on War Room, while Senate Democrats are calling for a delay to Vought’s confirmation vote following the news. A former OMB official said the memo read like a “hostage note written directly by Russ Vought.”

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AN 1 25

On Monday night, January 20 — his first night back in the White House — President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to end birthright citizenship. And a long list of lawsuits quickly followed, including one from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and attorneys general in 22 different states.

The ACLU and others are arguing that Trump's executive order is blatantly unconstitutional, as birthright citizenship is protected by the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, in an official statement on the lawsuit, stressed, "Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional — it's also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values. Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is. This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans."

READ MORE:['It’s a free country' — but some White House staffers are facing these new rules: report

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on January 22, writer Philip Jaffa describes the far-right Claremont Institute as a main influence on Trump and the MAGA movement's war on birthright citizenship.

Claremont, founded in 1979, was once a traditional conservative think tank greatly influenced by the late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona). But in recent years, it has taken an ultra-MAGA turn and aggressively promoted fringe conspiracy theories.

Jaffa explains, "Let's set aside for a moment the questions of the legality and constitutionality of Trump's action and ask instead: Where did he get this idea? How did eliminating birthright citizenship become a right-wing desideratum? There is no mystery as to where this is coming from. The idea that birthright citizenship is a false interpretation or recent innovation that warps the intended meaning of the 14th Amendment has been pushed into mainstream Republican circles by the tireless work of John Eastman and the Claremont Institute."

In an article published by Claremont's website **The American Thinker on January 22, Eastman — who was a major supporter of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results — promotes the claim that birthright citizenship isn't really protected by the 14th Amendment. Eastman claims that "the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause does not provide automatic citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances."

But countless legal scholars disagree with Eastman's views on the 14th Amendment.

Jaffa notes that in his American Thinker article, "(Eastman) lists several of the Claremont scholars who have written on birthright citizenship, and says he hopes the 'Claremont Institute's long-standing view' of the issue will soon be vindicated by the Supreme Court.' Just one problem: All the claims from MAGA and the Trumpians that the 14th Amendment was not intended to extend citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants falter when confronted with the obvious truth that the 14th Amendment, upon its adoption, did extend citizenship to a very large number of children of illegal immigrants."

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an 7 24

A Washington D.C. court Friday refused a demand from a one-time Justice Department official who could face disbarment for pushing Donald Trump's "big lie," according to court records and legal experts.

The D.C. Circuit court tossed attorney Jeff Clark's demand to transfer his disbarment case to federal court and professed itself unimpressed with the Trump ally's legal arguments, court records show.

"Clark lodges three responses, but none is persuasive," the ruling states, subsequently describing those arguments as "irrelevant" and "moot."

Clark was put on the path to potential disbarment by the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel complaint that he dishonestly attempted to interfere with the 2020 election, court records show.

The former Justice department official faced a disciplinary panel in April that concluded with the disciplinary counsel confirming it would seek Clark’s disbarment, CNN reported at the time.

While Clark's attorney argued Clark was working on behalf of then-president Trump, several high-ranking Justice department officials testified they found his false-information push "out of line," according to the report.

Clark also faces criminal charges in Georgia as part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' sweeping election racketeering case against Trump and his allies, court records show.

The recent Supreme Court ruling that Trump enjoyed presidential immunity when he pressured the Justice Department to challenge election results on his behalf has cast into doubt the future of that case, and the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Sources have told CNN Clark may raise the decision in the Fulton County criminal case.

On Friday, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said the ruling in Washington D.C. boded badly for Clark.

"Another loss for Jeff Clark, who was willing to hand over the Justice Department's reputation to Donald Trump so he could push the Big Lie," Vance wrote on X. "SCOTUS may think that's an official act of a president but I never will."

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Marjorie Taylor Greene threatens 'Democrat' Mike Johnson and likens him to Nancy Pelosi - Alternet.org

'No public record' of legal costs in Gaetz’s and Greene’s ongoing lawsuit: report - Alternet.org

a California judge last month gave US Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) the green light to proceed with suing two California cities over the cancellation of the 'America First' rally they were set to host in 2021. However, Judge Hernán Vera criticized some claims in the GOP lawmakers' lawsuit.

The Daily Beast reported that Judge Hernán Vera wrote in his ruling, "Greene and Gaetz had adequately convinced the court that the cities of Anaheim and Riverside plausibly canceled their 2021 event based on 'viewpoint discrimination.'"

However, Vera did offer some criticism, saying the far-right lawmakers' "claims that several civil-rights groups, including the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, conspired with the cities against them were full of 'numerous fatal deficiencies.'"

Less than two weeks later, the Beast reports, "One of the most striking aspects of the lawsuit, however, is the name of one of the attorneys who has been working on it—John Eastman, the architect of the bogus legal theory that former President Donald Trump leaned on to justify his attempt to wrest the transfer of power to Joe Biden."

The news outlet notes that "Eastman, however, is not lead counsel; that role fell to Alexander Haberbush, of the Lex Rex Institute."

As of Tuesday, April 2, the former Trump official can no longer practice law after Judge Yvette Rolalnd recommended his disbarment last month.

According to the Beast, "Despite all the docket activity and the intricate constitutional questions at the center of the dispute, there is no public record of the costs of those services—and that, legal experts say, could be a problem."

READ MORE:[How Trump and Matt Gaetz may have saved Marjorie Taylor Greene from a 'far-right' primary challenge: report

The news outlet adds:

*Even though the lawsuit is moving forward, it’s unclear how it’s being funded. Over the last year, there are no federal campaign finance records of any payments or debts owed to any of the lawyers on the case from any of the political committees associated with Gaetz or Greene—or any federal political committee at all.

*In fact, despite Gaetz and Greene’s tireless attempts to 'own the libs'—and fundraise off those efforts—the two have been basically radio silent about this case from the beginning.

*Campaign finance law experts agreed that the legal services should be accounted for in public filings.

Campaign finance law expert Caleb Burns told the news outlet, "Typically, a campaign that has retained counsel for legal work must disclose payments for that work on reports filed with the FEC. If the work has accrued and the campaign has not yet paid for it, the campaign would disclose the amount as a debt owed by the campaign."

*The Daily Beast's full report is here (subscription required).

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John Eastman doubles down on his election denial while promising to appeal his disbarment case | Media Matters for America

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an 3 24

california State Bar Judge Yvette Roland on Wednesday ruled that former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman violated ethics rules when he helped to orchestrate the ex-president's ploy to overturn the 2020 election, Politico reports.

Per the report, "Though Eastman may appeal Roland’s decision, including to the state Supreme Court, the ruling forces his law license into 'inactive' status while any review is pending, meaning he can no longer practice law in California."

Brookings Governance senior fellow and States United Democracy Center co-founder Norm Eisen shared the news via X (formerly Twitter), writing, "The CA Bar just delivered an important 2020 accountability outcome – recommending John Eastman for permanent disbarment. Kudos to our team @statesunited who filed the initial ethics complaint against him in 2021, along with me & dozens of bipartisan signers."

Adam Klasfeld reported, "A blistering line from John Eastman's disbarment recommendation: The Bar finds that the 'scale and egregiousness' of Eastman’s 'unethical actions far surpasses the misconduct' by Nixon henchman Donald Segretti, who coined the word 'ratf***ing' for political dirty tricks."

CNN's Zachary Cohen noted, "All signs pointed to this being the decision. Eastman has still avoided criminal charges except for in Georgia."

Former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Renato Mariotti commented, "One of Donald Trump’s lawyers will no longer be a lawyer. It is rare for lawyers to be disbarred for acts of moral turpitude, dishonesty, or corruption. But Eastman’s legal advice — to overturn an election and subvert our democracy — were unprecedented."

Jim Roberts, publisher at The 74, wrote, "Good."

Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn said, "I’m sure Trump will compensate him."

MSNBC's Katie Phang wrote, "Taking away the ability for Trump to abuse the legal system with the help of (disbarred-) lawyers like Eastman and Jeff Clark is critical to protecting our democracy."

Environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who the former president wanted to take over the Justice Department in the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a disbarment hearing Wednesday," according to NBC News.

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rww 3 24

john Eastman, a right-wing attorney who is in serious legal trouble for his intensive efforts to help former President Donald Trump stay in power after losing the 2020 election, continues to raise funds for his legal defense fund from Trump’s religious-right supporters. Eastman was the featured speaker at an online event hosted Monday night by the Salt and Light Council, a group that promotes “biblical citizenship.”

Eastman portrayed himself as making a heroic stand for truth and against tyranny, as he did last fall while fighting efforts by the California Bar Association to have him disbarred. Eastman used that trial to make the case that his 2020 claims about election fraud and illegality were legitimate but had never been fully considered by the courts. The judge’s decision in the disbarment trial was expected by March 1.

During his Salt and Light presentation, Eastman promoted his page on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, where people have contributed more than $630,000 to his legal defense fund so far. He said he’s “about a million in the hole beyond that right now,” adding that he thinks his total legal costs will run between $3 million and $3.5 million.

Eastman’s appearance made it clear that he remains as unrepentant about his work for Trump as he was last August, when he promoted debunked claims about the 2020 election and asserted that “the very existential threat that the country is under” justified his and Trump’s actions. On Monday’s Zoom call with Salt and Light activists, Eastman made similar claims. Citing the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, Eastman said, “And now, in this century, this is the fight comparable to those—the defense of freedom.” He went on:

And will this great shining city on a hill that has been a beacon to the rest of the world continue to be that beacon of light? Or will we go into an age of darkness? I can’t imagine anything more important than that fight. And so here we are on the front lines, and let’s just make sure we’re as well armed for it as we can.

Eastman portrayed himself as a defiant warrior for freedom and the future of the country:

Our country is on a precipice of losing our freedoms. And for whatever reason, I’ve been cast in the forefront of this battle. I’m on the battle lines, I’m on the ramparts. And I consider it one of the greatest honors of my life to be in the front of this fight for freedom, and fighting against tyranny. And I will do, I will engage in that fight with every fiber of my being as long as I’m able.

And he seems to have no doubt that he is up to the task:

I’ve been fighting for principled positions for my whole career. I’ve got one of the best law degrees and academic careers you can have. I clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States. I was a dean. I’ve got the skill set, God has given me the skill set to be in a position to fight this probably, at least as well as anybody else in the country. And so that’s what I do. And I’ll do it, you know, I’ll do it with a law degree as long as I have it. And I’ll do it without the law degree if they try and take that away from me, because this is an important fight to have.

Eastman had harsh words for his opponents, whether he was talking about the people trying to impose “a one world order,” public school teachers who undermine parents’ authority, members of the congressional Jan. 6 committee, or officials seeking to silence people who question the official line on vaccines, critical race theory, or transgender youth:

The folks we’re dealing with are evil. They don’t consider destroying our country as collateral damage for their overall mission, they consider that icing on the cake for their overall mission. I mean, we have to understand that we are dealing with pure evil, and the way you gotta, just you got to arm yourselves in truth and light, salt and light.

He urged the Salt and Light activists to get their churches politically engaged:

Your congregations, that’s a massive force, get them engaged, sign them up to vote, get the voter guides out in their hands and let them know who the decent people are, and who the folks that are mouthing platitudes are, whether in the primary elections or the general election. Get them engaged. Get them educated. This is an army that cannot be stopped if we would just launch it.

Salt and Light Council founder and President Dran Reese portrayed the ongoing legal prosecutions over the 2020 election in spiritual terms, praying that God would “overcome the devil in this case around John Eastman and President Trump.”

Video excerpts (full video linked above):

===

Attorney Kenneth Chesebro, a co-defendant in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference/RICO case against former President Donald Trump, dodged a possible prison sentence when he reached a plea agreement with her office.

As part of the plea deal, Chesebro must fully cooperate with Willis' team — and that includes being forthcoming about his role in the fake electors scheme and efforts to overturn President Joe Biden's victory in Georgia.

But Georgia wasn't the only state where Chesebro wanted Trump to receive electoral votes that Biden won.

On March 5, the Associated Press reported that as part of a civil lawsuit settlement in Wisconsin, Chesebro and former judge Jim Troupis "turned over more than 1400 pages of documents, e-mails and text messages, along with photos and video, offering a detailed account of the scheme's origins in Wisconsin."

In an opinion column published the following day, MSNBC's Hayes Brown points to this settlement as a troubling illustration of how dangerous the fake electors scheme was.

"Wisconsin was one of several key swing states, including Michigan and Georgia, where Trump's allegations of fraud quickly ran into the reality of the courtroom," Brown explains. "But, as he would hash out in his messages with former judge Jim Troupis, Chesebro found it better to think of the lawsuits challenging Biden's win as a convenient pretext for a more novel, underhanded strategy."

Brown continues, "Ongoing litigation would leave the election’s outcome in question when the Electoral College was required to meet on December 8, 2020; Republican electors in several states where Trump lost would also cast their votes that day — a supposed precaution should the campaign's lawsuits eventually win out. But, as Chesebro suggested early on, those fraudulent votes would allow Republican-controlled state legislatures to demand Congress count the 'alternate slates,' rather than those cast for Biden."

The MSNBC journalist stresses that Chesebro's actions went way beyond being a mere political "stunt."

"A 'stunt' is meant for show," Brown writes. "It seems, though, that the Trump campaign was hoping its plan would be consequential; in other words, it lacked the presumption of failure…. Even once the Supreme Court made it clear that it wouldn't step in to save Trump's doomed legal challenges, it wasn't the end of Chesebro's scheme."

Brown continues, "Instead, it simply merged with that of lawyer John Eastman, who argued in his own set of memos that Vice President Mike Pence should use the alternate slates that Chesebro had fostered to either throw the election for Trump or kick the matter back to GOP-controlled state legislatures."

*Read Hayes Brown's full MSNBC op-ed at this link.

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just weeks after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unsealed documents revealing U.S. Congressman Scott Perry's (R-PA) conversations in his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge on Tuesday gave the Department of Justice permission to access almost "1,700 records recovered" from the Pennsylvania lawmaker's cell phone, The Washington Post reports.

Politico reported a few of Perry's interactions, including:

{A Dec. 12, 2020, text exchange with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel discussing efforts to challenge Joe Biden’s victory in the election.}:

{A series of exchanges between Perry and a former DOJ colleague, Robert Gasaway, between Dec. 30, 2020, and Jan. 5, 2021, in which Perry embraced a plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence 'admit testimony' prior to the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Perry agreed to 'sell[] the idea' with a call to Trump, Pence and Trump adviser John Eastman, but Perry later alerted Gasaway that Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, 'will not allow access.'}:

The "most revealing" interaction, Politico noted, was a conversation the GOP leader had with ex-U.S. Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark — and Donald Trump Georgia co-defendant — in which Perry told Clark that Trump was upset with Clark for using the Justice Department to defend Pence against a lawsuit brought by another House member, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)."

Per the Post, on Tuesday, "Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington, D.C., gave investigators access to 1,659 records and withheld 396 others after a federal appeals court directed him to individually review 2,055 communications from Perry's phone to decide which were protected by the Constitution’s 'speech or debate' clause, which grants members of Congress immunity from criminal investigation when acting in their official capacities."

According to the report, "Tuesday's order will determine which messages investigators with special counsel Jack Smith can actually use as potential evidence in any case, pending an expected renewed appeal by Perry, part of legal fight that has tied up the records for more than a year."

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'Didn’t really care how many laws had to be broken': Trump lawyer John Eastman grilled on 60 Minutes - Alternet.org

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department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith is requesting court records from a lesser-known case in California, and the dates of records requested line up with the dates that former Donald Trump attorney John Eastman took the stand.

Politico reported Thursday that Smith's team is asking for records from the State Bar Court of California pertaining to Eastman's disbarment proceedings. The far-right attorney has been in the Golden State defending his law license, which state bar officials are fighting to have stripped in the wake of Eastman's felony indictment in Fulton County District Court. Smith's team requested transcripts from October 30th, November 2nd and November 3rd. All three days correspond to days when Eastman was called to testify in-person. Bar officials reportedly asked Eastman about his conversations with Trump and other elected officials as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith didn't disband his grand jury after it indicted the former president. Because Eastman has been revealed to be "co-conspirator #2" in Trump's indictment, and because Smith's grand jury has gone quiet in recent weeks, Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney wrote that Smith may be planning to indict Eastman as part of his election interference investigation in Washington, DC.

Following Eastman's testimony in California in October and November, a judge made a "preliminary finding" that Eastman violated the ethics of his profession by assisting Trump in his efforts to overturn election results in the courts. In recent weeks, California bar officials have been presenting "aggravating" evidence that would be used in arguments to justify stripping Eastman's ability to practice law, possibly including the speech he delivered to a crowd of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.

John Eastman is the author of the so-called "Eastman Memo" that laid out the plan for Trump's legal team to postpone Congress' certification of Electoral College votes, with the help of Vice President Mike Pence. According to the memo, Republican senators would lodge objections to certifying counts in battleground states President Joe Biden narrowly won, like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, citing the submission of an alternate slate of electors. At that point, Pence would cite the alternate elector slates as reason to declare those states' results in dispute, thereby declaring Trump to be the winner of the 2020 election. Eastman theorized that Democrats would object to Pence'e declaration, meaning that the final decision would be punted to the House of Representatives.

Eastman's memo then hypothesized that because the US Constitution stipulates that each state's delegation gets one vote in the House of Representatives, Trump would be elected president by the GOP-controlled House. At the time, Republicans had control of 26 state delegations, with Democrats only having control of 24. Eastman then proposed Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military quell protests that would inevitably result from Trump's coup.

In addition to his role as one of Trump's attorneys, Eastman is a major player in the conservative legal world. The former law clerk to Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went on to become the Founding Director of the far-right Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and remains a senior fellow at the influential conservative think tank. He's also the board chair of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes marriage rights for same-sex couples.

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'Didn’t really care how many laws had to be broken': Trump lawyer John Eastman grilled on 60 Minutes - Alternet.org

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Trump ally and January 6 architect John Eastman now on the verge of losing his law license - Alternet.org

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:{:{}:

JOHN C. EASTMAN ANTHONY T. CASO Counsel of Record CONSTITUTIONAL COUNSEL GROUP 174 W. Lincoln Ave., #620 Anaheim, CA 92805 (916) 601-1916 atcaso@ccg1776.com

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https://www.alternet.org/john-eastman-legal-goose-cooked/

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former president Donald Trump was at the center of the criminal charges filed this week related to his attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, but he was not alone: 18 other people were indicted with Trump under racketeering charges brought by a grand jury convened by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis. Right Wing Watch is publishing brief profiles of some of Trump’s fellow indictees. In this segment, former Trump attorney John Eastman.

:{:{}:

John Eastman, Unrepentant Insurrectionist, Unsuccessful Pardon-Seeker

John Eastman, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “has long advanced positions on the far-right fringe of the legal community on issues ranging from immigration to LGBTQ equality to separation of church and state,” as Right Wing Watch noted in a December 2020 profile. As part of Trump’s legal team, Eastman was an energetic advocate for the fringe theory that Vice President Mike Pence could and should unilaterally refuse to accept certified Electoral College votes from swing states won by President Joe Biden.

Eastman was hit with nine counts in the Georgia indictment, according to the Daily Beast, including:

Violation of the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act;
Solicitation of violation of oath by public officer;
Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer;
Conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree;
Conspiracy to commit false statements and writings;
Conspiracy to commit filing false documents; and
Filing false documents.

Eastman is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at The Claremont Institute, which former Right Wing Watch investigative reporter Jared Holt called “an increasingly white nationalist think tank” back in 2019, the year that Claremont made “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec a fellow. Just this month, journalist Katherine Stewart dubbed Claremont “the anti-democracy think tank” in a deep dive for The New Republic.

As Right Wing Watch was among the first to report, Claremont’s chairman Thomas Klingenstein hosted and posted online a three-part interview with Eastman that was clearly designed to let him portray his work on behalf of Trump’s bid to stay in power in the best possible light. Eastman continued to promote claims about election fraud that were debunked long ago, and he refused to “discount” even the most “out there” and “far-fetched” fraud claims—presumably a reference to fellow Trump election lawyer and indicted co-conspirator Sidney Powell’s fantastical and unproven claims about international conspiracies to rig voting machines.

The final segment of Eastman’s interview was published on the day of Trump’s arraignment in Washington, D.C. in his first criminal indictment related to the 2020 election (Eastman was an unnamed and unindicted co-conspirator in that indictment). Eastman justified his actions as necessary to save America from a left bent on its destruction, and he told Klingenstein that if Pence had followed his advice, and riots erupted across the country in protest, he would have counted on the military to recognize Trump as their commander-in-chief and restore order. The unrepentant Eastman told Klingenstein that he would still give the same legal advice today.

Eastman’s role in Trump’s attempted coup was highlighted in one of the public hearings held by the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection. Eastman was at the forefront of the Trump team’s relentless behind-the-scenes campaign to pressure Pence to violate the Electoral Count Act over the objections of White House attorneys.

Eastman even helped rile up the crowd at Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, by repeating false charges about voting fraud, “demanding” that Pence stop the count and send the question back to swing state legislators.

That afternoon, Pence’s chief counsel Greg Jacob texted Eastman as the mob was attacking the Capitol, saying “Thanks to your bullsh**t, we are now under siege.” In a response uncovered by the Jan. 6 committee, Eastman replied that “the siege is because you and your boss [Pence] did not do what was necessary.” But even then, Eastman wasn’t done, imploring Jacob “to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act] and adjourn for ten days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations.”

Eastman later emailed indicted co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani asking to be put on Trump’s pardon list, but despite all that he did to help Trump stay in power, a pardon was not forthcoming.

Back in January, Eastman appeared on a religious-right prayer call organized by supporters of Trump’s efforts to stay in power, where he quoted scripture, described himself as a champion of truth, and portrayed his legal troubles as a Stalinist form of legal persecution.

Claremont chair and interviewer Klingenstein, a major donor to far-right causes, describes himself in the “about” section of his YouTube channel as someone who “believes that we are in a cold civil war.”The description of Klingenstein continues: “The enemy—what he calls the ‘Woke Comms’—are winning, in large measure because Republican leaders have yet to engage. His essays, speeches and plays all encourage Republicans to do just that—to think, talk, and act as if we are at war.”

Tags: John Eastman Tom Klingenstein Capitol Insurrection Jan. 6 Trump Indictment Claremont Institute

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'Under close scrutiny': DOJ investigators zero in on ex-Trump lawyer Eastman over fake electors scheme

Alex HendersonJuly 04, 2023

Although special counsel Jack Smith has been conducting two federal criminal investigations of former President Donald Trump, only one of them has resulted in an indictment so far. At this point, Smith's probe of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results is strictly an investigation — not a prosecution, although former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr has predicted that Smith will probably "pull the trigger" and prosecute that case as well.

In an article published by The Guardian on July 4, journalist Peter Stone reports that Smith's team has been zeroing on former Trump attorney John C. Eastman's post-election activities. Eastman, a major player in the Claremont Institute (a right-wing think tank that has taken a very MAGA turn in recent years), was the author of an infamous late 2020 memo that described a game plan for overturning the election results.

"John Eastman, who was in the vanguard of lawyers plotting schemes involving 'fake electors' and other ploys to help Donald Trump thwart Joe Biden's win in 2020, is now under close scrutiny in federal and state investigations of Trump's drives to stay in power — and faces possible disbarment in California, say former prosecutors," Stone reports. "The former California law professor is one of several lawyers whose legal stratagems have been heavily examined by special counsel Jack Smith's accelerating investigation into Trump and his allies' efforts to block Biden from taking office."

READ MORE: Why disbarment could be the least of MAGA lawyer John Eastman's problems

The state investigation that Stone is referring to is being conducted by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis.

Former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig told The Guardian that "it will be surprising" if "neither" Smith's investigation nor Willis' "ends in a criminal charge against Eastman as well, possibly, as other lawyers and Trump himself."

Columbia University law professor Dan Richman, a former prosecutor, told The Guardian, "By obtaining testimony from fake electors, Smith may be better able to nail down what information and advice passed between these soldiers in the larger scheme and those Trump lawyers who helped to concoct it. Testimony that, say, electors were advised to make false statements or given deliberately misleading advice would go far to showing a deliberate fraud by Trump's 'brain trust' of lawyers, including Eastman."

READ MORE: Fani Willis' latest moves strongly indicate a Trump indictment in Georgia is coming this summer

Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

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'Be careful': MAGA Republicans warned their holy war against DOJ could tear party apart - Alternet.org ›

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Revealed: One-time 'liberal' Dem is the 'brains' behind Trump’s 'fake electors'

Brandon GageAugust 16, 2023

United States Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel have all filed criminal indictments against individuals involved with a scheme to send slates of fraudulent electors to Washington as part of the alleged conspiracy to keep former President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. On Wednesday, The Washington Post's Isaac Stanley-Becker revealed that the "brains" behind the clandestine operation, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, "a Harvard-trained lawyer once keen on liberal causes" who "registered as a Democrat as recently as 2016."

While Chesebro "may be the least well known of the small set of figures key to both indictments," Stanley-Becker writes, "his retreat from public" following the January 6th, 2021 insurrection "has deepened the mystery for former classmates and colleagues puzzling over how he became a central player in plans to reverse the outcome of a democratic election."

Having studied under renowned Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe — whom he cited in his recently-publicized memo outlining the fake electors gambit — Chesebro's descent into right-wing politics has left his contemporaries baffled, Stanley-Becker notes. That includes Tribe himself.

Chesebro "was not making good-faith legal arguments for his client," Tribe said. "He was inventing legal fiction that paid no attention to the law and creating a pretext for a conspiracy to steal an election." He added that "I had the impression that Ken really cared about the underdog, about people who were screwed by the system."

Lawyer Jonathan Massey recalled that Chesebro, who worked on then-Vice President Al Gore's legal challenge to the Supreme Court's decision to award George W. Bush the presidency in 2000— was "a pretty standard liberal" who "idolized Larry Tribe."

But Chesebro's pro-Trump argument that "any state can submit new electors at any time," Tribe said, was a gross distortion of their work more than two decades ago and "the birth pangs of Trump's plot, as I see it."

Stanley-Becker recalls that Chesebro's partisan affiliations began to shift after he invested a "low six-figure sum" in cryptocurrencies that purportedly netted him a return of "several million dollars."

READ MORE: 'Cliffs Notes' versus 'encyclopedic': Report contrasts Smith’s and Willis’ Trump election indictments

In 2016, Stanley-Becker continues, Chesebro aligned himself with the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank, where he would meet attorneyJohn Eastman,who also now finds himself indicted along with Trump, Chesebro, and other accused co-conspirators in Georgia. On November 8th, 2020, Chesebro "urged Trump electors to meet and vote in Wisconsin because of the ongoing recount in that state," Stanley-Becker explains. On December 6th, Chesebro proposed "that Trump electors should convene not just in Wisconsin but in six 'contested States' as a way to 'prevent Biden from amassing 270 electoral votes.'"

That was the crux of the effort to have ex-Vice President Mike Pence "not just open but count the sham votes, creating uncertainty about the election's true victor. In a memo three days later, federal prosecutors charge, Chesebro provided 'instructions on how fraudulent electors could mimic legitimate electors,'" Stanley-Becker adds.

Then, on December 13th, Chesebro "emailed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to argue that Pence could choose from among 'conflicting votes' presented to Congress, according to documents released by House investigators and cited in the Georgia indictment," Stanley-Becker states. "Chesebro went on to distribute instructions and draft certificates to the sham electors in the various states, prosecutors allege."

:{:{}:

Chesebro, Tribe stressed to Stanley-Becker, was "the brains" and "if the pressure campaign on Pence had worked," he and Eastman "would have generated a successful coup."

READ MORE: 'Hammered by his old friend, RICO': Columnist analyzes Giuliani’s 'bewildering' fall from grace

View Stanley-Becker's analysis at this link (subscription required).

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/ted-cruz-2657051447/

overturn election role bigger

navarro said did what was told?!

'Came closer than widely realized': Ted Cruz worked 'directly with Trump' to try to overturn the election

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement March 28, 2022

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has bragged that he was “leading the charge” to ensure Joe Biden was not certified as the rightful winner of the 2020 election. But until now the depths and extent of his actions, including that he was “working directly with Trump to concoct a plan that came closer than widely realized to keeping him in power,” have not been widely known.

That’s according to a report by The Washington Post on Monday that reveals one day after major news outlets called the election for Joe Biden, Donald Trump, still the President of the United States, made “an urgent call” to Sen. Cruz, asking him if he would be willing to argue Trump’s just-filed case at the Supreme Court.

“Sure, I’d be happy to” if the court granted a hearing, Cruz said he responded.

The call was just one step in a collaboration that for two months turned the once-bitter political enemies into close allies in the effort to keep Trump in the White House basedon the president’s false claims about a stolen election.

The Post adds another important revelation: Cruz’s longtime friend is John Eastman, the author of the “coup memos,” who retired from his post at the Chapman University School of Law after news of he memos became public. Eastman, who still serves as the chairman of an anti-LGBTQ organization, the National Organization For Marriage (NOM), is currently facing an ethics investigation from the California State Bar Assoc.

The House Select Committee of the January 6 Attack is now interested in Cruz’s relationship with Eastman.

“As Eastman outlined a scenario in which Vice President Mike Pence could deny certifying Biden’s election, Cruz crafted a complementary plan in the Senate,” the Post explains. “He proposed objecting to the results in six swing states and delaying accepting the electoral college results on Jan. 6 in favor of a 10-day ‘audit’ — thus potentially enabling GOP state legislatures to overturn the result.”

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U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the top Republican on the Committee, has said: “I think that Senator Cruz knew exactly what he was doing. I think that Senator Cruz is somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what his duties and obligations are, and was willing, frankly, to set that aside.”

Eastman pleaded the Fifth when asked by an attorney for the Committee if he had “any communication with Senator Ted Cruz regarding efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election.”

Cruz canceled a scheduled interview with The Post, and through a spokesperson said:“To the best of his recollection, he did not read the Eastman memo until months after January 6, when it was publicly reported.”

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BIGGER PROB?

https://www.alternet.org/john-eastman-2661933770/

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https://www.alternet.org/john-eastman-maga/

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Eastman, the attorney who wrote the infamous so-called "coup memo" that urged former Vice President Mike Pence to reject certified election results on Jan. 6, 2021, got off to a rough start in his disbarment hearing on Tuesday.

As reported by NPR investigative reporter Tom Dreisbach, Eastman tried to call as an expert witness a certified public accountant named Joseph Fried who wrote an ebook about the 2020 election in which he cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Joe Biden's win.

California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland, however, wanted no part of Fried in the hearings, as she noted he lacked any relevant experience in running elections.

"I don't see how Mr. Fried is qualified to be an expert," she told Eastman.

FROM EARLIER:'Never seen anything like it': Investigative reporter says Trump's Oman deal is without precedent

Eastman attorney Randy Miller tried to push back on Judge Roland's claims by noting that an accountant could give mathematical analysis of the vote in key swing states, but she wasn't having it.

State Bar attorney Duncan Carling then chimed in to argued that "we don't believe the opinion of a CPA...is relevant," while adding that the accountant "never identified any instances of fraud" in the election.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/two-reported-co-conspirators-trumps-alleged-coup-plot-are-organizations

two reported co-conspirators in former President Donald Trump’s scheme to remain in office after his loss in 2020 are high-ranking members of organizations working to staff the next Republican administration.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election lists six unnamed co-conspirators, two of whom have been widely reported to be John Eastman, Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute, and Jeffrey Clark, Senior Fellow and Director of Litigation at the Center for Renewing America. According to the indictment, Clark suggested deploying the military to suppress political unrest in the event that the coup proved successful. Eastman appears to have been comfortable with that plan as well.

The Claremont Institute and the Center for Renewing America are both coalition members advising on Project 2025,an effort led by right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation to provide the next Republican president with policy papers and vetted personnel on day one of their administration. The Center for Renewing America is run by Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist and right-wing media regular guest with sweeping plans to gut the federal civil service and weaponize federal law enforcement against his group’s enemies under a future Republican administration. Both organizations are closely aligned with Trump and the far-right wing of the Republican Party.

If Trump is reelected, he is expected to either pardon himself or appoint an attorney general who would dismiss federal charges against him, meaning that two of the figures most closely associated with Trump’s failed coup could help determine how he quashes the case if given the chance.

Under Trump, Clark was a mid-level Department of Justice official who embraced the former president’s false allegations of voter fraud more than his colleagues did. Like CRA boss Russ Vought, Clark regularly appears on Steve Bannon's War Roomshow. After Trump’s loss, Clark proposed sending letters to election officials in key states claiming, without evidence, that the Department of Justice had “identified significant concerns” about the election results and suggesting that they should send “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump,” according to congressional testimony.

According to the indictment, on the morning of January 3, 2021, Clark also accepted an offer from Trump for the position of acting attorney general, a fact not previously known to the public. That afternoon, deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin told Clark “there is no world” in which Trump would not leave office on January 20, 2021, and that if Clark pushed forward with the coup attempt “there would be riots in every major city in the United States.”

“Well … that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act,” Clark responded, referring to the vague and outdated law that gives the president the authority to deploy the military against civilians. Trump later rescinded the appointment following threats of mass resignations from DOJ.

Eastman is a constitutional lawyer who attempted to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to claim authority to invalidate the certification of the election on January 6, 2021. That role is purely ceremonial, and Eastman faced a disbarment hearing in California this summer related to his bogus legal claims. Axios has reported that, between January 4 and January 7, 2021, Eastman sent 101 emails offering advice to Trump and others in his circle detailing strategies to prevent Congress from certifying the election results. On August 2, Eastman appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show, where he doubled down on his theory behind the illegal attempt to over turn the 2020 election.

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https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/11/they-had-an-insider-on-scotus-legal-experts-stunned-by-bombshell-clarence-thomas-was-seen-as-key-by-trump-lawyers/

Washington Post bombshell revealing Trump attorneys saw Justice Clarence Thomas as the key to getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election is leaving several legal experts stunned.

The Post reports eight emails “ordered released by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of California, include correspondence between Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman and others discussing various legal strategies to convince Republican members of Congress to object to the official certification of electoral votes in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.”

In one email “from Chesebro to Eastman and several others sent on Dec. 31, 2020, Chesebro argued that [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas would ‘end up being key’ to asking the high court to overturn then-President-elect Joe Biden’s win in contested states.”

The Post states the email also says, “they should ‘frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt.'”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney sums up the scheme.

“Chesebro made the plan explicit: Get any remotely favorable ruling from a federal judge — not to win outright but to embolden GOP state legislatures, Congress or Pence to reverse the results.”

Politico‘s reporting includes copies of the redacted emails, and adds: “Chesebro contended that Thomas would be ‘our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.'”

“I think I agree with this,” Eastman replied.

“Eastman,” Politico notes, “an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, once clerked for Thomas and had corresponded with his wife, Virginia, in the weeks before Jan. 6.”

“[I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5,” Chesebro wrote in one email, “ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress.”

Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) blasted both the Supreme Court Justice and his far right wing activist wife, Ginni Thomas.

“They had a damn insider on SCOTUS who they thought would help them overthrow our democracy,” Signorelli tweeted. “He’s married to a deranged MAGA cult member. He won’t even recuse himself.”

Former Harvard Constitutional Law professor Laurence Tribe blasted Chesebro.

“We now learn that Ken Chesebro saw Justice Thomas as Trump’s ‘only chance’ to stop the 2020 election from being duly certified. Such abhorrent abuse of an attorney’s license to practice law should be strictly disciplined and perhaps criminally prosecuted,” he tweeted.

Attorney and writer Rachel Solar, pointing to the Politico article asks: “When is it enough???? His wife is an insurrectionist He refuses to recuse He’s the Trump election-denial go-to? Come on.”

Journalist Helen Kennedy goes one step further.

“Hey look! It wasn’t just critics of the Supreme Court who thought Clarence Thomas was corrupted – Trump’s lawyers said so too in secret emails just revealed.”

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j6 ch5 snippet. see also ch 3

j6 ch 5

...Kenneth Chesebro Articulated a “President of the Senate” Strategy in Early December, When the Trump Campaign was Convening “Alternate” Electors in Key States President Trump Lost.

On December 13, 2020, Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer, sent a memo to Rudolph Giuliani, the President’s lead outside counsel, upon request from Trump Campaign official Boris Epshteyn.21 Chesebro laid out a “‘President of the Senate’ strategy,” arguing that the “President of the Senate” (“he, and he alone”) is charged with “making judgments about what to do if there are conflicting votes.” 22 Chesebro argued that when the joint session met on January 6th, the President of the Senate should not count Arizona’s electoral college votes for former Vice President Biden, “[b]ecause there are two slates of votes.” 23 Of course, there were not two legitimate “slates of votes” from Arizona. There were the official electors, certified by the State, and a group of fake electors convened by the Trump campaign.

Chesebro’s memo set President Trump’s pressure campaign on a course to target the Vice President on January 6.24 Judge Carter found that the “draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act” and “is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.” 25 That plan was also advanced by John Eastman.26

On December 23, John Eastman Drafted the First of His Two “January 6th Scenario” Memos, Articulating the Argument that Under the Constitution the Vice President is the “Ultimate Arbiter.”

On December 23, 2020, Eastman wrote a two-page memo summarizing ways to ensure that “President Trump is re-elected.” 27 Eastman suggested that Vice President Pence could refuse to count the electoral college votes from seven States: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to Eastman, Vice President Pence could simply reject these States’ electoral college votes. At that point, President Trump would have 232 electoral college votes compared to former Vice President Biden’s 222. This was sufficient, in Eastman’s view, to guarantee President Trump’s victory, because he would have a majority of the electoral college votes. “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected,” Eastman wrote.

Eastman considered the possibility that Democrats in Congress would object, stating the plain truth that 270 electoral college votes are necessary to win. In that event, according to Eastman, the election could be sent to the House of Representatives.28 The Republican-majority of delegations in the House would then re-elect Trump as president. Eastman concluded: “The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission—either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. . . . The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.” 29

From the start, President Trump was looped in on Eastman’s proposal. The same day Eastman started preparing the memo, he sent an email to President Trump’s assistant Molly Michael, at 1:32 p.m.: “Is the President available for a very quick call today at some point? Just want to update him on our overall strategic thinking.” 30 Only five minutes later, Eastman received a call from the White House switchboard; according to his phone records, the conversation lasted for almost 23 minutes.31

Eastman Changed His Evaluation of the 12th Amendment, and the Role of the Vice President, After President Trump Lost the Election.

...

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https://www.alternet.org/trump/john-eastman-2659316821/

...eastman, the far-right attorney, disgraced former law professor, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and current chairman of the anti-LGBTQ National Organization For Marriage (NOM) is facing eleven counts of alleged ethics violations, and disbarment, by California state bar regulators. Among the allegations, “intentional acts of moral turpitude, dishonesty, or corruption.”

As The New York Times reported last fall, “after the November election, Mr. Eastman wrote the memo for which he is now best known, laying out steps that Vice President Mike Pence could take to keep Mr. Trump in power — measures Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have likened to a blueprint for a coup.”

So has the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, which late last month referred Eastman – in the same breath as Donald Trump – to the Dept. of Justice for possible prosecution on criminal charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

[twt]

on Thursday, Bloomberg News reported California state bar regulators “say they will seek to strip” Eastman of his law license.

“The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy — for which he must be held accountable,” the State Bar of California’s Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement. “Eastman has not been charged with any crimes to date.”

“The 11 charges arise from allegations that Eastman engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states,” the State Bar of California’s statement adds.

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...

President Trump’s Allies Filed Lawsuits Seeking a Court Order Directing Vice President Pence Not to Count Certain Electoral Votes.

One of President Trump’s congressional allies, Representative Louie Gohmert (R–TX), pushed a version of Eastman’s theory in the courts. On December 27, 2020, Representative Gohmert and several of the Trump Campaign’s fake electors for the State of Arizona (including Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward) filed suit against Vice President Pence in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.67 As Ward explained to Marc Short in a phone call the day the suit was filed, President Trump was aware of the lawsuit and had signed off on it: “We wouldn’t have done that without the president telling us it was okay,” she told him.68

In the suit, the Plaintiffs alleged that there were “competing slates” of electors from five States.69 They asked the court to rule that portions of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 were unconstitutional and that “the Twelfth Amendment contains the exclusive dispute resolution mechanisms” for determining an objection raised by a Member of Congress to the electors submitted by any State.70 Essentially, Representative Gohmert was asking the court to tell Vice President Pence that he was prohibited from following the procedures set forth in the Electoral Count Act. Much like Eastman’s theory, the Gohmert plaintiffs asserted that the Vice President has the “exclusive authority and sole discretion” to determine which electoral votes to count.71

Although the Gohmert suit was premised on the same theory Eastman advocated, Eastman did not agree with the decision to file suit. Eastman argued that filing a suit against the Vice President had “close[] to zero” chance of succeeding, and there was a “very high” risk that the court would issue an opinion stating that “Pence has no authority to reject the Biden-certified ballots.” 72 As highlighted by Judge Carter, Eastman’s theory was that Vice President Pence should take this action “without asking for permission” from Congress or the courts.73 Another attorney, Bill Olson, stated that getting a judicial determination “that Pence is constrained by [the Electoral Count Act]” could “completely tank the January 6 strategy.” 74 Those who were advocating to press on with the Eastman scheme did not want to bring it before a Federal judge because of the high risk that a court’s determination that the scheme was illegal would stop the plan to overturn the election dead in its tracks.

Eastman himself pushed this cavalier attitude towards the courts and compliance with the law during a call with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on January 4th. During this call, just two days before the joint session, Eastman pressed Speaker Bowers to bring the Arizona House into session to certify Trump electors or decertify the Biden electors.75 Speaker Bowers responded as he had previously responded to similar entreaties by Giuliani and President Trump: by explaining that doing so would require him to violate his oaths to the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions and that he “wasn’t going to take such an action.” 76 Undeterred, Eastman still pushed Speaker Bowers to “just do it and let the courts sort it through.” 77

...Eastman himself pushed this cavalier attitude towards the courts and compliance with the law during a call with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on January 4th. During this call, just two days before the joint session, Eastman pressed Speaker Bowers to bring the Arizona House into session to certify Trump electors or decertify the Biden electors.75 Speaker Bowers responded as he had previously responded to similar entreaties by Giuliani and President Trump: by explaining that doing so would require him to violate his oaths to the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions and that he “wasn’t going to take such an action.” 76 Undeterred, Eastman still pushed Speaker Bowers to “just do it and let the courts sort it through.” 77

Ultimately, Representative Gohmert’s legal gambit failed; a U.S. district judge dismissed the case quickly.78 The judge’s ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court, which rejected Gohmert’s appeal without further consideration.79

Other Individuals Advising President Trump and His Campaign Also Advocated for a Role for the Vice President at the Joint Session.

Other individuals inside and outside the White House also advanced versions of the theory that the Vice President had agency in the joint session. The issue of Vice President Pence’s role came up during a December meeting in the Oval Office. Either President Trump or his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tasked John McEntee, the director of the Presidential Personnel Office, with researching the matter further.80 Though McEntee was one of President Trump’s close advisors, he was not a lawyer and had no relevant experience. Yet, he wrote a one-page memo claiming that “the VP has substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process.” 81

This wasn’t the only one-page analysis drafted by McEntee before January 6th.82 He later proposed a “middle path” in which he envisioned the Vice President accepting only half the electoral votes from six disputed States (specifically, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada).83 McEntee portrayed this as a way to avoid “disenfranchis[ing]” States while still achieving the desired result: delivering a second term to President Trump. McEntee conveyed this memo to the President with a cover note reading, “This is probably our only realistic option because it would give Pence an out.” 84 McEntee told the Select Committee that this judgment was based on his assessment that “it was, like, pretty obvious [the Vice President] wasn’t going to just reject . . . the electors or whatever was being asked of him at that time.” 85

Another advocate of a plan for the Vice President to play a role in the joint session was Jenna Ellis, a lawyer working for the Trump Campaign. She argued in two memos that Vice President Pence had the power to delay the counting of certified electoral votes. In the first memo, addressed to President Trump and dated December 31, 2020, Ellis advised that Vice President Pence should “not open any of the votes” from six States that “currently have electoral delegates in dispute.” 86 Ellis asserted that this “dispute” provided “sufficient rational and legal basis to question whether the [S]tate law and Constitution was followed.” Ellis proposed a delay of ten days, as the Vice President and Congress awaited a “response from the [S]tate legislatures, which would then need to meet in an emergency electoral session.” If any of the State legislatures “fails to provide a timely response, no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that [S]tate.” Ellis claimed that Vice President Pence would not be “exercising discretion nor establishing new precedent,” but instead “simply asking for clarification from the constitutionally appointed authority.” 87

Ellis sent the substance of this memorandum in an email to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on January 1, 2021, under the subject line “Constitutional option.” 88 And, on January 4, 2021, she sent the same substance to Fox News contributor John Solomon under the subject line “Pence option.” 89

Ellis addressed a second memo, dated January 5, 2021, to Jay Sekulow, an outside attorney who represented President Trump during his first impeachment proceedings and in other litigation.90 Ellis again claimed that Vice President Pence had the power to delay the certification of the vote. Ellis recommended that the Vice President should, when he arrived at the first contested State (Arizona), “simply stop the count” on the basis that the States had not made a “final determination of ascertainment of electors.” “The [S]tates would therefore have to act.” 91

Sekulow clearly disagreed. “Some have speculated that the Vice President could simply say, ‘I’m not going to accept these electors,’ that he has the authority to do that under the Constitution,” Sekulow said during an episode of his radio show.92 “I actually don’t think that’s what the Constitution has in mind.” Sekulow added that the Vice President serves a merely “ministerial, procedural function.” 93

In addition, Herschmann discussed this memo with Sekulow. They agreed that Ellis did not have the “qualifications or the experience to be giving advice on this” or to be “litigating the challenges” that President Trump’s team was filing in court.94 Herschmann did not think that Sekulow shared the memo with the President.95

5.2 President Trump and his Allies Exert Intense Public and Private Pressure on the Vice President in Advance of the Joint Session of Congress on January 6th

...While Vice President Pence recognized Congress’s authority under the Electoral Count Act to raise objections to the certification, neither he nor his staff were aware of any evidence of fraud that would have had a material effect on the outcome of the election in any State.100 Because of President Trump’s repetition of election fraud allegations, Jacob and the Vice President’s staff conducted their own evaluation of these claims. Jacob asked Morgan to send the campaign’s best evidence of election “fraud, maladministration, irregularities, [and] abuses in the system.” 101 The Vice President’s legal staff memorialized the review they conducted of these materials in a memo to Vice President Pence, which concluded: “most allegations of substantive voter fraud—defined to mean the casting of illegal ballots in violation of prevailing election laws—are either relatively small in number, or cannot be verified.” 102

Vice President Pence also discussed the Trump Campaign’s fake electors with his advisors. Both Jacob and Morgan assured Vice President Pence that there were not dual slates of electors. The electors organized by the Trump Campaign were not valid.103 Morgan had already written a memo on the topic in December, concluding that the “alternate” electors—that is, fake—lacked a certificate of ascertainment issued by the State.104 Without such an ascertainment, the Trump Campaign’s fake electors had no standing during the joint session. Jacob had also prepared a “flow chart” memo outlining each of the legal provisions implicated in the joint session on January 6th.105 Jacob advised Vice President Pence that “none of the slates that had been sent in would qualify as an alternate slate within the meaning of the Electoral Count Act.” 106 Vice President Pence was still worried that the fake elector issue was sowing confusion, so he wanted his statement on January 6th to be as transparent as possible.107

That same day, January 2nd, Marc Short released a brief statement on behalf of the Vice President. “Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election,” the statement read. “The vice president welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th.” 108 Short testified that the statement was consistent with the Vice President’s view that he did not have the power to reject electors.109 Short issued this statement because of the “swirl” regarding the question of “where [Vice President Pence] stood.” 110

Steve Bannon’s podcast, War Room: Pandemic, was one of the primary sources of this swirl.

January 2, 2021: Eastman and Bannon Question the “Courage and Spine” of Vice President Pence.

Steve Bannon’s podcast, War Room: Pandemic, was one of the primary sources of this swirl. Eastman was a guest on a January 2nd episode of Bannon’s show. Much of their conversation focused on Vice President Pence, and the belief that he had the power to overturn the election.

“[W]e are entering into one of the most, um, important constitutional crisis [sic] the country’s ever had,” Bannon said.111 Bannon complained that Vice President Pence had “spit the bit,” meaning he had given up on efforts to keep President Trump in power.112 Eastman claimed that the election had been “illegally conducted,” and so the certified votes now “devolved back to the [S]tate legislature[s], and the only other place where it devolved back to is to Congress and particularly the Vice President, who will sit in presiding over a Joint Session of Congress beginning on January 6 to count the ballots.” 113 Eastman claimed that the Vice President (and Congress) had the power to reject the certified electors from several States out-of-hand. “[T]hey’ve got multiple slates of ballots from seven states,” Eastman said. “And they’ve gotta decide [] which is the valid slate to count . . . I think they have that authority to make that determination on their own.” 114

Bannon claimed the Vice President of the United States is “hardwired in,” and an “actual decisionmaker.” 115 The Vice President’s role is not “ministerial,” Bannon declared.116 Eastman agreed.117 “Are we to assume that this is going to be a climactic battle that’s going to take place this week about the very question of the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act of 1887?” Bannon asked.118

Eastman replied, “I think a lot of that depends on the courage and the spine of the individuals involved.” Bannon asked Eastman if he meant Vice President Mike Pence. “Yes,” Eastman answered.119

January 3, 2021: Eastman Drafts Another “January 6 Scenario” Memo “War Gaming” the Ways that Vice President Pence Could Change the Outcome of the Election.

The next day, January 3, 2021, Eastman drafted a six-page memo that imagined several scenarios for January 6th, only some of which led to President Trump’s victory.120 In a section titled, “War Gaming the Alternatives,” Eastman set forth the ways he thought President Trump could remain in power.121 Importantly, Eastman concluded that President Trump could remain president if—and only if—Vice President Pence followed Eastman’s illegal advice and determined which electoral college ballots were “valid.” 122 In another scenario, Eastman imagined that President Trump may somehow win re-election in January 2021 if Vice President Pence remanded the electoral votes to State legislatures, such that they could have ten days to investigate President Trump’s baseless claims of fraud. In that case, Eastman allowed that former Vice President Biden may still win, should the State legislatures determine that the evidence was “insufficient to alter the results of the election.” 123

Eastman Knew that there Were No Valid “Alternate” Slates, But He Nonetheless Predicated His Advice to the Vice President and President on this Claim.

In his six-page memo, consistent with the earlier two-page memo, Eastman states that “the Trump electors” met and transmitted votes, finding that “[t]here are thus dual slates of electors from 7 [S]tates.” 124 Even since January 6th, Eastman has continued to affirm and defend his assertion that there were dual slates of electors, writing: “Trump electors from seven [S]tates in which election challenges were still pending met (albeit of their own accord) on the date designated by Congress, cast their votes, and transmitted those votes to Congress.” 125

Eastman used these slates as a premise for his argument that the result of the election was disputed. However, Eastman acknowledged on multiple occasions—both before and after January 6th—that these “dual slates” had no legal significance. In an email sent on December 19, 2020, Eastman wrote that the seven Trump/Pence slates of electors “will be dead on arrival in Congress” “unless those electors get a certification from their State Legislators.” 126 Of course, this certification never came and there was no basis for any action on the “dual slates.” 127

Nevertheless, on December 23, 2020, Eastman used the existence of these slates as a justification for the Vice President to act, in an email to Boris Epshteyn, a Trump Campaign lawyer. “The fact that we have multiple slates of electors demonstrates the uncertainty of either. That should be enough.” 128

Again after January 6th, Eastman acknowledged in an email that the fake electors’ documents were invalid and irrelevant.129 “Alas,” he said, “[T]hey had no authority” because “[n]o legislature certified them.” 130

Eastman concluded his memo by asserting that his plan was “BOLD, Certainly,” but he attempted to justify it, arguing that “this Election was Stolen by a strategic Democrat plan to systematically flout existing election laws for partisan advantage; we’re no longer playing by Queensbury Rules, therefore.” 131

Eastman repeated what he wrote in his earlier, shorter memo, claiming that Vice President Pence should act “without asking for permission—either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court.” 132 Eastman claimed “that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter.” 133 Eastman ended on an especially hyperbolic note. If the election’s results were not upended, “then the sovereign people no longer control the direction of their government, and we will have ceased to be a self-governing people. The stakes could not be higher.” 134

January 4, 2021: President Trump and Eastman Meet with Pence and His Staff in the Oval Office.

...

January 5, 2021: President Trump Again Pressures Vice President Pence in a One-on-One Meeting at the White House and Another Phone Call with Eastman.

President Trump demanded to see Vice President Pence again that same day. Vice President Pence had canceled a planned lunch with President Trump, intending to work on the statement he planned to issue on January 6th to explain publicly why he wouldn’t bow to the President’s pressure.191 But Pence couldn’t avoid Trump. Vice President Pence had to delay a Coronavirus Task Force meeting later that same day when he was called to the Oval Office to meet with the President.192

The two men met alone, without staff present. While we have not developed direct evidence of what was discussed during this one-on-one meeting between the President and Vice President, it did not change the fundamental disagreement between them about the limits of the Vice President’s authority during the joint session. Jacob said the Vice President left the meeting “determined.” 193 Vice President Pence did tell Marc Short what transpired during the meeting, but Short refused to tell the Select Committee what was said.194 Short described Vice President Pence’s demeanor as “steady.” 195 Short testified that the below excerpt from the book Peril may have been sensationalized but was generally consistent with Short’s understanding of the discussion:

“If these people say you have the power, wouldn’t you want to?” Trump asked.

“I wouldn’t want any one person to have that authority,” Pence said.

“But wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?” Trump asked.

“No,” Pence said. “Look, I’ve read this, and I don’t see a way to do it. We’ve exhausted every option. I’ve done everything I could and then some to find a way around this. It’s simply not possible. My interpretation is: No. . . .

“No, no, no!” Trump shouted. “You don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.” 196

Later that day, Jacob and Short were both present for a call between President Trump and Vice President Pence.197 Eastman and at least one other lawyer were with President Trump on the call as well.198

Eastman recognized that Vice President Pence was not going to change his mind on rejecting electors outright, but he still asked if the Vice President would consider sending the electors back to the States.199 “I don’t see it,” Vice President Pence responded, “but my counsel will hear out whatever Mr. Eastman has to say.” 200

Jacob received other calls from Eastman on January 5th.201 Jacob told the Select Committee that he had a detailed discussion with Eastman concerning the ways his proposal would violate the Electoral Count Act.202 Eastman resorted to a ridiculous argument—comparing their current situation to the crisis that faced President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Eastman invoked President Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.203 He also told Jacob to “stay tuned” because “we” were trying to get some letters from State legislators indicating that they were interested in the Vice President sending the electors back to the States.204

January 5, 2021: An Accurate New York Times Article about the Vice President Prompts a False Statement in Response by President Trump.

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an 1 23

eastman the far-right attorney, disgraced former law professor, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and current chairman of the anti-LGBTQ National Organization For Marriage (NOM) is facing eleven counts of alleged ethics violations, and disbarment, by California state bar regulators. Among the allegations, “intentional acts of moral turpitude, dishonesty, or corruption.”

\u201c"We believe that the evidence described by my colleagues today and assembled throughout our hearings warrants a criminal referral of former President Donald J. Trump, John Eastman, and others..." \u2014 @RepRaskin #January6thCommitteeHearings\u201d

— Defend Democracy Project (@Defend Democracy Project) 1671477014

On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported California state bar regulators “say they willseek to strip” Eastman of his law license.

Law & Crime’s Adam Klasfeld further explains that Cardona “intends to seek Eastman’s disbarment for alleged violations of Business and Professions Code section 6106, which punishes making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of ‘moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.'”

Last week The New York Times described Eastman as “a chief architect of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss,” but it is his fellow Republican attorneys who delivered the judgment on his skills.

“Many White House lawyers expressed contempt for Mr. Eastman, portraying him as an academic with little grasp of the real world,” The Times reported. “Greg Jacob, the legal counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, characterized Mr. Eastman’s legal advice as ‘gravely, gravely irresponsible,’ calling him the ‘serpent in the ear’ of Mr. Trump. Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, recounted ‘chewing out’ Mr. Eastman. Pat A. Cipollone, the chief White House counsel, is described calling Mr. Eastman’s ideas ‘nutty.'”

It wasn’t just Republican attorneys in the Trump White House.

During the January 6 insurrection, Eastman, certainly no silent architect, stood at the same podium Donald Trump would speak at, and delivered a fiery speech alongside Rudy Giuliani. Six days later his colleagues at Chapman University demanded his firing[vid?]

the disbarment may be the least of Eastman’s self-inflicted woes.

“He has been drawn into the criminal investigation into election interference in Atlanta, which is nearing a decision on potential indictments,” according to The Times, also adding that the “F.B.I. seized his iPhone.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/unequal-justice-crime-and-punishment/

j6 comm good at narr]

...

Trump’s prosecution, at least at the federal level (he’s also under serious investigation in the states of Georgia and New York), now rests in the hands of the Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith. The DOJ has received criminal referrals from the committee for four overlapping federal felonies committed by the former President:

Obstruction of an official proceeding, referring to the joint session of Congress convened on January 6, 2021, to confirm the election of Joe Biden, and the effort to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify Biden’s victory;
Conspiracy to defraud the United States, referring to the former president’s multi-phase scheme to overturn the election;
Conspiracy to make a false statement, referring to the plan to submit false slates of electors to Congress and the National Archives; and
Inciting, assisting, or giving aid and comfort to an insurrection, referring to Trump’s incendiary speech immediately prior to the riot at the Capitol and his behavior during the riot.

The committee has also referred five of Trump’s former aides and associates to the Justice Department: John Eastman,Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Cheseboro and Jeffrey Clark. Trump, however, is the only member of the crew who has been referred for insurrection. The report singles out the ex-commander-in-chief on the insurrection charge, stating “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump.”

Although the referrals are non-binding, Smith is already in the thick of investigating the insurrection and the plot to overturn the 2020 election, presenting evidence to at least two grand juries. The special counsel is also leading the investigation into Trump’s removal of top-secret government documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Convicting Trump will not be easy, especially on charges related to January 6. Each of the felonies referred to the Department of Justice requires proof of criminal intent. The government will have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew he had lost the election and was acting with a “corrupt purpose” to obstruct the work of the joint session of Congress or, on the conspiracy referral, that he had an intent to defraud the nation with the submission of fake slates of electors.

It will be particularly challenging to prove that Trump incited or assisted the insurrection as Trump would likely mount a First Amendment defense. In its landmark 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court articulated a two-part test for punishing incendiary speech, holding that the First Amendment protects advocating the use of force or lawbreaking “except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis added).

Still, it’s easy to understand why the committee chose to cite Trump for insurrection. Trump knew that members of the crowd who had gathered to hear him talk were armed when he urged them to march to the Capitol to “fight like hell.” And amid the ensuing melee, he accused Pence of cowardice for not using his authority as Vice President to change the outcome of the election, seething in a Tweet, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution…USA demands the truth!” Almost immediately after the Tweet was posted, the report notes, “the crowd around the Capitol surged, and more individuals joined the effort to confront police and break further into the building.”

Should Trump be tried and convicted of insurrection, he would face a prison sentence of up to ten years. He would also be barred from holding federal office for life.

So, what are the odds that Trump is finally held to account? Will Jack Smith prove to be Trump’s Porfiry Petrovich, the police investigator who brought Raskolnikov to justice, or will he turn out to be another Robert Mueller? We may have the answer in a matter of months.

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an 12 22

Following reports of the Jan. 6 committee’s decision to refer Trump’s criminal charges to the Justice Department, social media users are asking why Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas didn’t get the same treatment, Newsweek reports.

The wife of long-time Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas, Thomas was in the spotlight earlier this year after a texting thread between her and Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows came to light. In the texts, Thomas urged Meadows to use his influence and power to help overturn the 2020 election.

Not only was she in cahoots with Meadows, but Alternet previously reported that the conservative activist communicated with John Eastman – the Republican lawyer who received criminal referral from the Jan. 6 committee for his attempt to deem Mike Pence powerful enough to discard electoral college votes.

Twitter users are not happy about the committee’s failure to refer Thomas as well.

Jonathan Goldman tweeted,"How do you make a criminal referral for John Eastman but not Ginni Thomas? They literally conspired to overthrow democracy together."

“So Ginni Thomas just gets away with it because she's married to a Supreme Court Justice?" another Twitter user asked.

Adam Rifkin tweeted "What about Ginni Thomas? #TrumpCoupAttempt"along with a video of a June MSNBC segment on Thomas and Eastman’s communication.

It is not confirmed that the Justice Department will carry out the recommended charges against Trump and Eastman. And according to a tweet from CBS correspondent Robert Costa, it is currently “unclear” whether the “complete transcript” from Thomas’ September meeting with the Jan. 6 committee will be released to the public.

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an 11 22

Another batch of emails obtained from John Eastman shows Donald Trump's lawyers were counting on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to help them disrupt Joe Biden's election win, and their certainty raises new questions about his wife's role in the scheme.

Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote Dec. 31, 2020, that Thomas would be "our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6" on a challenge to election results in Georgia, whose circuit court he oversees, and Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Alemany wondered on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" why he and Eastman felt so confident about the justice's willingness to assist.

"The fringy lawyers that were surrounding Trump and helping him in his efforts to overturn the results of the election in the last few months of his presidency had reason to believe, at least publicly, that justice Clarence Thomas was going to be sympathetic to their cause. Remember in December of 2020,Thomas along with [Justice Samuel] Alito issued a brief statement after the audacious Texas lawsuit was filed, calling to ultimately throw out the results of the 2020 election in four battleground states. The majority dismissed it, but Alito and Thomas expressed a statement that was sympathetic to the lawsuit, and said that the majority threw it out too quickly."

"Now the question is, I think, privately, what reasons did John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro have to believe that Thomas would be sympathetic to them if he got a lawsuit in front of them?" she added.v

Ginni Thomas was corresponding with Eastman during that same period, along with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Republican legislatures in key states won by Biden, and Alemany said the newly revealed emails place her under additional scrutiny.

"It's a very small world here," Alemany said. "There was no indication in the correspondence that either of the Thomases were [copied] on the e-mails, but you can clearly see why John Eastman was fighting hard to prevent the release of these e-mails."

Host Joe Scarborough said the revelations were scandalous.

"It's shocking, the behavior between John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, and the efforts to overthrow, throw out democratic election for the presidency," Scarborough said. "Also, their misreading of what Clarence Thomas and Alito did when they went along with an opinion in a Pennsylvania case, the only time the court wrote anything of substance on the election challenges, they said about the Pennsylvania case, which involved the court in Pennsylvania overruling the state legislature. That race is a constitutional question, and I think they rightly said, this race has questions we probably should address now, but even if we did address them now, it wouldn't change the outcome of the election, so there you have even the two most conservative justices saying even if we take this question up, which we think we should, there aren't going to be enough votes to change the fact that Joe Biden's the next president of the United States."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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must give docs

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/crime-fraud-exception-john-eastman/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-who-apparently-helped-mastermind-john-eastmans-coup-plot-was-only-one-talking

Fox News is burying Thursday’s revelations about the plot by then-President Donald Trump and Trump lawyer John Eastman to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to illegally reject electors from key states that supported Joe Biden and thus subvert the election to keep Trump in office, detailed during Thursday’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The only mentions of that conspiracy during Fox’s prime-time block Thursday night came from Fox host Mark Levin – who apparently worked with Eastman to develop the plot and spoke out on Thursday in support of it.

Former Pence legal counsel Greg Jacob described at Thursday’s hearing Eastman’s scheme for Pence, during the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress to count Electoral College votes, to either reject the votes from some states outright or send them back to their state legislatures for review. According to Jacob, during one meeting in which Eastman sought to pressure Pence to participate, the Trump lawyer acknowledged that the plot was illegal. The committee also aired video testimonies of other Trump aides saying that they had told Trump the plan was illegal, and produced an email from after the riot in which Eastman sought a presidential pardon.

J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals judge and conservative icon who advised Pence with regard to the scheme, warned at the hearing’s conclusion that “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”

“That’s not because of what happened on Jan. 6,” he added. “It’s because to this very day the former president, his allies and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024 — if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election — that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election. But succeed.”

Fox “news side” programs Your World and Special Reporteach ran news packages on the story that day, sandwiched around the “opinion side” panel show The Five, where discussion of January 6 was limited to sympathy for the perpetrators. Then at 7 p.m. ET, the real Fox came on, and the coverage of the hearing essentially vanished.

Eastman’s name was mentioned only once after that – by Levin, who in an appearance on Hannity criticized the select committee for not producing “professors on the left who actually agreed with John Eastman’s position before it was John Eastman’s position.” The Fox host, who has long publicly supported Eastman’s legal theory, went on to allege that “it is not clear under the 12th Amendment what the responsibilities of the vice president of the United States are and how they are limited.”

Neither Levin nor Sean Hannity noted that Levin was not just a commentator who supported Eastman’s plot, but apparently an active participant in its development.

In May, Eastman sought to prevent the release to the January 6 committee of a dozen emails he exchanged with a person matching Levin’s description. According to the filing, Eastman was communicating with Levin in order to collaborate with him on the litigation in Levin’s role as an attorney, and thus the emails should be protected by lawyer-client privilege. Notably, Eastman reportedly first caught Trump’s attention by expounding on a nearly limitless view of Trump’s legal authority during a 2019 appearance on Levin’s Fox program.

Levin’s comments on Hannity were the only meaningful discussion of the coup attempt on Fox’s evening “opinion” block. Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham all ignored the substance of Thursday’s hearing on their programs (Ingraham did, however, host Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-GA] to defend the rioters).

On Friday morning, the story was all but absent from Fox & Friends [twt matt g]

it’s not hard to figure out why Fox hosts aren’t covering Trump’s coup attempt – they regret that it didn’t succeed. And when Republicans attempt a similar scheme in the future, as Luttig suggested they would, the network’s propagandists will be actively supporting it.

---

Politico reported Friday that John Eastman, the disgraced ex-law professor who formulated many of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was also apparently in communication with Fox News host Mark Levin. The story gets even more interesting from there, revealing the shell game that right-wing media personalities engage in while doubling as political operatives.

A legal filing by Eastman’s attorneys reveals that, among the messages Eastman is still attempting to conceal from the House January 6 committee are 12 pieces of correspondence with an individual matching Levin’s description as “a radio talk show host, is also an attorney, former long-time President (and current board Chairman) of a public interest law firm, and also a former fellow at The Claremont Institute.” Other details, including a sloppy attempt to redact an email address, also connect to Levin, who did not respond to Politico’s requests for comment.

Eastman’s contention, however, is that he was not communicating with Mark Levin the media personality, which would forfeit attorney-client privilege on those communications. Instead, he was speaking with Mark Levin the attorney, and formulating legal strategies regarding the election.

A quick law lesson: The “dual role”

In their legal filing, Eastman’s attorneys argue that he should not have to turn over certain communications with right-wing media figures, even as other communications with those same people have been submitted. This question turns on a body of case law involving lawyers who serve in a “dual role.”

This area of law normally involves people who both are attorneys and have personal business interests, in which case a court must determine in which capacity they were acting and whether those communications or actions in question retain the legal privileges of secrecy.

The brief acknowledges that Eastman could find no previous instance in law having to do with media figures who were also attorneys, but it argues to extend this doctrine accordingly.

“Many members of the modern ‘media’ have multiple roles,” the filing argues, contending that some of Eastman’s communications with Levin in fact “involved work product communications with attorneys who also wear media ‘hats.’”

Eastman’s legal and media “hats” collide

In the case of Eastman, however, his work as an attorney in conservative causes and his public media presence have been so closely intertwined as to demonstrate that any such ethical separations quite simply do not exist in the right-wing media and political ecosystem.

Most notably, Eastman first came to Trump’s attention via an appearance on Levin’s Fox show back in May 2019, in which Eastman argued that Trump had the power as president to fire people who were investigating him. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” Eastman argued — even including an investigation involving the president himself.

The New York Times reported last year that Trump had never met Eastman before watching this episode. “Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting,” the Times reported.

In addition, Eastman’s new filing notes that he has had different sets of communications with an “opinion editor at Newsweek,” who is also affiliated with different conservative legal organizations. That description matches Newsweek editor Josh Hammer, who published Eastman’s disastrous op-ed in 2020 asserting that then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris was not a U.S. citizen and thus ineligible to run for office, even though she was in fact born in California. In this instance, clearly, the Venn diagram of the conservative legal and media worlds was simply a perfect circle.

And while Eastman was advising Trump on his theories of reversing the election results, he also advanced those ideas on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s show.

Levin uses his media platform to push far-right legal theories

While apparently acting under the privileges of an attorney corresponding with Eastman on their efforts to overturn the election, Levin also used his media platform with Fox News to publicly advocate for the same pseudo-legalistic theories. For example, he and Fox News contributor Ken Starr advocated the weekend after the election for state legislatures to overturn their election results and instead appoint pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College.

During an appearance on the December 10, 2020, edition of Hannity, Levin also advocated for the bizarre lawsuit in which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election results in four swing states. [vid CitationFrom the May 18, 2022, edition of Westwood One’s The Mark Levin Show

when on January 3, 2021, Levin said on his Fox show that it was Congress’ job to choose who won the presidential election — and he claimed members of Congress would be “shredding the Constitution” if they didn’t reject Biden’s victory.

In the nearly year and a half since the January 6 insurrection, Levin has used his radio show to chastise Congress for investigating the insurrection, spread conspiracy theories about the FBI having “instigated” the riot, defend Eastman’s idea that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject the election results, and compare riot defendants to "people in the civil rights movement."

Just this past Wednesday, Levin said on his radio show that people should not cooperate with the January 6 committee, “certainly not under these circumstances,” and he further called the entire inquiry a violation of the Constitution. So, are these pronouncements purely an aspect of his role as a media commentator, or do they also connect to the “hat” he wears as an attorney?

[aud CitationFrom the May 18, 2022, edition of Westwood One’s The Mark Levin Show]

Mathe dirty secret of right-wing media: They’re all in the “dual role”

In an odd way, however, Eastman’s legal team has delivered a sort of public service through this “dual role” argument, in that it puts all the rest of Fox News and other right-wing media figures, such as Josh Hammer, into their proper perspective. Essentially, all of these conservative media personalities wear different “hats” in both their media jobs and as political operatives — and they will swap labels for whichever one serves them most conveniently in any particular moment.

The examples abound. Most notoriously, there is Sean Hannity’s true role as a Republican operative and Trump’s “shadow” chief of staff, while leveraging his media presence to assist his favored political candidates. Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo scripted her TV interview with Trump to aid his effort to overturn the election results, and recently used her show to spread a COVID-19 conspiracy theory she apparently picked up from a Republican Senate candidate. And of course, numerous Fox News personalities have a long-running track record of appearing at Republican campaign rallies and fundraisers.

The proper response to this shell game is to simply stop humoring it. Instead of allowing Fox and other right-wing media figures to decide on a moment-to-moment basis whether they are journalists or political operatives, they should be recognized as political operatives at all times, and called out for the manner in which they use media trappings for a partisan front operation.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/war-room-election-denial-activist-cleta-mitchell-announces-coup-memo-author-john

10/19/22

STEVE BANNON (GUEST): All progressive Democrats, take your number two pencil out and write this down. All votes don't count, OK? All votes don't count. All your illegal, all your non-chain of custody, all your non-certifiable votes don't count and they're not going to count and this is why you're throwing a fit, because you understand if you can't cheat you can't win.

I don't care if DOJ doesn't like hearing that, I don't care if Joe Biden and his illegitimate group of crooks in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue don't like it, I could care less, Nancy Pelosi or anybody.

...

CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Tomorrow in Albuquerque, we have a special summit, training, for people in Albuquerque, all over New Mexico, we urge you to come.

...

We'll have training all afternoon about how people can become poll challengers and observers in New Mexico, we need people in New Mexico,John Eastman, Dr. John Eastman will be speaking, Jenny Beth Martin will be speaking, Lynn Taylor who led the charge in Virginia will be saying, giving a speech on if it can happen in Virginia in 2021, it can happen in New Mexico in 2022. So it's not too late but we've got to get out there.

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wisconsin election fuckery?

8 pp memo?

https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/59/ramthun/media/1351/eastman-memo-final-draft.pdf

...from copy paste

December 30, 2021

Representative Timothy Ramthun

Wisconsin State Assembly

409 North, State Capitol

P.O. Box 8953

Madison, WI 53708

Re: Decertification of Elector Votes

Dear Representative Ramthun:

You have asked me to provide an opinion letter addressing whether a state legislature has the constitutional authority to decertify previously certified electoral votes for a candidate for the office of President of the United States upon a definitive showing of illegality and/or fraud sufficient to have altered the results of the election.

analysis which follows. And I want

legally necessary for the

legislature to re-assume its plenary authority over the appointment of presidential electors, I do

think it is politically necessary, or at least strongly advised as a matter of prudent statesmanship...

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~ jan 6 exec priv BS

27 pp

CONCLUSION For the reasons stated above and previously, plaintiff requests this Court order that the materials identified on plaintiff’s privilege logs are protected from disclosure to the defendants by the attorney client and work product privileges.

Anthony T. Caso (Cal. Bar #88561) Email: atcaso@ccg1776.com CONSTITUTIONAL COUNSEL GROUP 174 W Lincoln Ave # 620 Anaheim, CA 92805-2901 Phone: 916-601-1916 Fax: 916-307-5164

Charles Burnham (D.C. Bar# 1003464)* Email: charles@burnhamgorokhov.com BURNHAM & GOROKHOV PLLC 1424 K Street NW, Suite 500 Washington, D.C. 20005 Telephone: (202) 386-6920 * admitted pro hac vice Attorneys for Plaintiff

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA, SOUTHERN DIVISION

JOHN C. EASTMAN, Plaintiff, vs. BENNIE G. THOMPSON, et al. Defendants Case No.: 8:22-cv-00099-DOC-DFM PLAINTIFF’S REPLY BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF PRIVILEGE ASSERTIONS

Judge: Hon. David O. Carter Magistrate Judge: Hon. Douglas F. McCormick Crtrm.: 9D Trial Date: not set

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mma 8 22 youtube

D'SOUZA (HOST): John has also been a lawyer for Trump. And this is actually what we want to talk about is the – is the actions of the left and trying to go after John and others for their work for former President Trump. John, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. We actually go kind of way back. As you might remember, I was a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute right after Dartmouth. And that's where I met – I met the whole gang of Clare-monsters, as we might call them, who have had such a tremendous influence on American public policy.You have gone on to a really distinguished career. I'd like you to start by just talking about those kind of tense days in the maybe even leading up to the election, but certainly in the aftermath of the election. What is it that you did that is supposedly now driving the left off a cliff and causing them to sort of summon this big kind of lynch mob against you, as if to say that you are a grave enemy of the country and the Constitution.

JOHN EASTMAN (GUEST): Well, in fact, in one of the litigations I'm currently involved with, the January 6 committee actually says not only was I wrong, but I was dangerous. I guess the danger there lies in standing up and speaking the truth to power. And I'm – and I'm catching the same kind of assault that you've been under, Dinesh, for the terrific movie you did, 2000 Mules that starts to expose some of the corruption. You focus there on some very important evidence of outright fraud.I focused mostly on the evidence of illegality.Our Constitution is very clear.

Article two of the Constitution gives to the legislatures of the states the plenary power to, quote, direct the manner of choosing presidential electors. Most people would find this odd today, but for the first half-century of our nation's history, the legislatures just chose the electors themselves. And – and even when they submit that decision to popular vote as – as all the states have done since the Civil War, the manner that they set out is the election code. And when you had non-legislative officials, secretaries of state, county clerks, what have you, simply ignoring the existing election code laws on absentee ballots, on the requirement of signature verification, all of these steps that the legislatures put in to prevent fraud from occurring because it's so difficult to discover it after the fact.

Those things were just dispensed with by non-legislative officials,[60 court cases] and that meant that the election was conducted illegally, even unconstitutionally. And that's what we focused on. And the left doesn't want anybody talking about that,at least not talking about it since 2020. Of course, they talked about it a lot in 2018 and 2016 and what have you. And so what they are now attempting to do is criminalize those that spoke up against the admitted illegality in the conduct of the election. That is, as your movie and other investigations are showing, actually led to the very fraud that those statutory restrictions were put in place to try and prevent.

D'SOUZA: John, you're making a crucial point here, and I want to slow it down because I – I want to make sure I understand it clearly. What you're saying is that even though Trump believed there was fraud and there were, of course, accusations of fraud from the very beginning, you're saying that your argument didn't really depend on that.It didn't depend upon being able to prove instance A, B, C, or D of fraud. You're saying that there is a process that needs to be in place for the Constitution to be upheld. The Constitution dictates how elections should be conducted and who should run them. And the Constitution specifies that the answer to that is state legislatures. And so in the state legislatures and what they specifically put in the code is undercut by secretaries of state, by other officials. Then, in a sense, we have a – an illegal – illegally conducted election, even if you're unable to prove any fraud at all. Am I correct in summarizing that is the argument you're making?

EASTMAN: That's right. And – and the reason that's so important is because of how difficult it is to prove fraud after the fact. And I'll give you one very good example. Wisconsin prohibits drop boxes, unmanned drop boxes, what have you. They also require extensive signature verification and witness signatures on the absentee ballots before they're counted. And the law is very clear. If it doesn't include those things, the ballots shall not be counted.

Now, once you separate the ballot from the envelope and after the fact, try and determined, well, that we didn't have a signature. How do we know that was actually the illegal voter who cast that ballot? Well, you could say, okay, there and now we've got evidence of fraud. But – but how was the vote cast? The ballot is now separated from the envelope and it can't be proved which way it went.

In 2018, in North Carolina's 9th congressional district, there was an illegal ballot harvesting scheme that was conducted on behalf of one of the [GOP?] candidates. Without his knowledge, I might point out. But – but the elections board said we cannot prove then, given the number of illegal ballots that were collected, we can't prove or certify what the actual result of the election is. And they ordered a new election. This is the reason these rules are in place ahead of time.

There was massive cheating that went on.Whether that actually produced the fraud that it was designed to make it difficult to accomplish or not is immaterial to the illegality that occurred. And that's what I tried to focus on in our Supreme Court briefs, both in – in my motion to intervene on behalf of President Trump in the Texas litigation, but in a cert petition filed from Pennsylvania on three of the illegally changed statutes, I mean, they changed the deadlines. They changed the signature verification.

They said, oh, if you're in the room in the Philadelphia Convention Center, which is about as big as a football field, standing all the way at one end, that's good enough to be able to observe what's happening a hundred yards away. I mean, it was insane.

And – and they and – they threw out the ability for people to make any election challenge. They said, even though we've been doing signature verification for a hundred years, we don't find that anywhere in the statutes and all of those statutory provisions that – that seem to acknowledge that those are just archaic relics and you can just ignore them. I mean, this is what the court actually said and the notion that we can change the rules. And by the way, some of that went on after the election up to two weeks after the election. They were still changing the rules for partisan benefit in Pennsylvania. This kind of stuff, we used to call it cheating and they're now trying to go after criminally those people who are calling them out on the illegality, the unconstitutionality, and the cheating.

D'SOUZA: John, let's take a pause.

As YouTube notes on its site:

Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come. As always, news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context.

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8 22 an raw story

the scheme to overthrow the 2020 presidential election using fake Trump electors in states President Joe Biden carried has been broadly panned as illegal by legal experts. Even John Eastman, the far-right lawyer who drafted the memo outlining the scheme, admitted in private to Trump that there was no real basis for it in law.

But according to Fox News commentator Mark Levin, it was a perfectly valid scheme. On Monday, he told his viewers, "That is to be resolved by the United States Congress. That is not a crime either. You might not like it. You might think it's weird, you might think it's unethical, but it's not a crime."

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), one of two Republicans on the House January 6 Committee and a key voice against Trump from the right, begged to differ, criticizing Levin's remark in a Twitter thread on Tuesday.

"The Eastman memos & fake elector scheme are indefensible," wrote Cheney, tagging Levin's account. "On the memos: Eastman took the opposite legal position a month before the election; he knew all 9 Justices would rule against him; & he admitted it was illegal in an Oval Office meeting & afterwards. White House lawyers said it was illegal too. The fake electoral slates were obviously false, and were transmitted to multiple federal officials for purposes of obstructing the electoral count. None of this is ambiguous."

"Watch the hearings, and read the opinion of the federal judge who concluded that Eastman and Trump likely violated two criminal statutes," concluded Cheney.

This comes amid recent reports that the Justice Department is zeroing in on Trump in its investigation into various schemes to overturn the election.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/john-eastman/

on fox beg $

GiveSendGo, the Christian right’s version of GoFundMe, is a top platform for Jan. 6 defendants seeking help with legal bills related to the insurrection at the Capitol. “QAnon Shaman” Jake Chansley raised $13,000; Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes has collected (a surprisingly modest) $12,000; Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio has raked in $113,000.

... ROLLING STONE

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catholic? MARK MARTIN XIAN FEDSOC WACKO?

jan 6 speech (deep state rationale] secret compartment in voting machines --> djt fight like hell or no cty anymore [ //rhoades OK]

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war games

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/john-eastman-2020/

The Trump advisor who wrote the infamous pseudo-legal justification for overturning the 2020 election also helped to create a blueprint for what Donald Trump could do to hang onto power by force.

John Eastman joined a couple dozen right-wing operatives in simulating the aftermath of a closely contested election. The report was published in mid-October 2020 and co-sponsored by the Claremont Institute, the think tank where Eastman works.

The authors of the report are clear their simulation had a very serious purpose: to prepare real public officials for real violence in the event of a disputed election. The authors say they fully expected the necessary preparations to crush dissent would be perceived as the run-up to a military coup. But in their view, that couldn't be helped. It was important to come up with legal justifications for overwhelming political violence before the election, they said.

The report is a blueprint for how Donald Trump could fuse federal power, local police and criminal gangs like the Proud Boys to hang onto power. It seems to foreshadow Eastman's plan for a procedural coup on January 6, except projected onto Biden supporters.

The Claremont simulation started from the assumption that left wing violence was a "near-certainty" and that Trump's Defense Department, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security must be prepared to crush Biden supporters in the event of a contested election.

The simulation starts from the following half-baked premise: All the networks call the contest for Biden on Election Night, because he appears to have won Texas, bringing his electoral vote total to 270.

Somehow, all the networks fail to notice that Russia had taken the entire electoral apparatus of Texas offline before all the votes came in. (This wouldn't get past Steve Kornacki, let me tell you.) Texas goes back in the "too close to call" column. Biden is still two electoral votes ahead, but the nation explodes with rioting and arson by "antifa" and Black Lives Matter. Fourteen police officers are shot on election night.

Thus begins Choose Your Own Adventure: Death Squads. There's an elaborate procedural and legal backstory about how an uncertain Election Night metastasizes into a constitutional crisis to be worked out probably by the Supreme Court, but I won't bore you with it because it's obviously a figleaf. This is a manual for state violence.

With the nation in flames, the players have Trump's Department of Defense deploy military personnel carriers to multiple states, which local mayors rudely call "tanks." These pesky mayors aren't cooperating with the Trump administration's desire to clamp down on dissent.

So, their police departments go completely rogue and join forces with the Trump administration. The NYPD seems to have overthrown Bill De Blasio. The Chicago Police Union refuses to protect Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Federal law enforcement with no identifying insignias encircle the White House to defend it with heat rays.The Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers form posses to "assist."

Tellingly, Eastman and his fellow players assume that pro-Biden forces will try to gather at the Capitol on January 6. So they thwart their political adversaries by tracking their phones, setting up police checkpoints and using Trump's Homeland Security fusion centers to identify and detain their leaders. The players protect the Capitol with an army of federal agents, snipers and of course more heat rays. Trump's FBI hunts down more antifa leaders in the DC suburbs.

War games often reveal more about the players than they do about the future, and this exercise is no exception. The report shows that John Eastman and his confederates expected a disputed election would set off a wave of civil unrest that would culminate in the US Capitol on January 6, supported by insurrections at key state houses that same day. The report projected this strategy onto Biden supporters, but that's exactly what Trump confederates did on January 6.

A showdown on January 6 might feel inevitable in retrospect, given the horrific events of that day. But it wasn't an obvious choice. January 6 was the date of the certification of the presidential election, which has historically been a pro-forma affair. Results have already been decided.

The states have certified their election results, the Electoral College already has voted and all that's left to be done is the little ceremony during which the Congress counts the electoral votes. It doesn't make sense to have your last stand to win a contested election after the results are already set in stone, unless you think you can change them.

John Eastman did in fact come up with a crackpot legal excuse for how Mike Pence could throw the election to Trump. His argument was to the law as creationism is to biology, but it was good enough for Trump. We know Trump pressured Pence to act on Eastman's advice. Eastman shared a dais with Trump as well as Rudy Giuliani at the rally immediately before the siege. The crowd was chanting "Hang Mike Pence," because Pence had refused to comply with Eastman's scheme.

Eastman later claimed he wasn't serious about the memo, but the results of this simulation suggests he and fellow right-wingers had sized up the certification of the presidential election as their moment to stage a procedural coup with physical reinforcements waiting.

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/30/trump-2020-election-steal-presidency-coup-inside-story

guk no lnx

startling memo, a surreal Oval Office encounter – just some of the twists in the unfolding story of Trump’s bid to cling to power, which critics say was no less than an attempted coup

Ed Pilkington in New York

@edpilkington

Sat 30 Oct 2021

Last modified on Wed3 Nov 2021

On 4 January, the conservative lawyer John Eastman was summoned to the Oval Office to meet Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Within 48 hours, Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election would formally be certified by Congress, sealing Trump’s fate and removing him from the White House.

Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Appears At National Review Ideas Summit

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 29: Fox News host Tucker Carlson discusses 'Populism and the Right' during the National Review Institute's Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. Carlson talked about a large variety of topics including dropping testosterone levels, increasing rates of suicide, unemployment, drug addiction and social hierarchy at the summit, which had the theme 'The Case for the American Experiment.' (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Tucker Carlson condemned over ‘false flag’ claim about deadly Capitol attack

The atmosphere in the room was tense. The then US president was “fired up” to make what amounted to a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results and snatch a second term in office in the most powerful job on Earth.

Eastman, who had a decades-long reputation as a prominent conservative law professor, had already prepared a two-page memo in which he had outlined an incendiary scenario under which Pence, presiding over the joint session of Congress that was to be convened on 6 January, effectively overrides the votes of millions of Americans in seven states that Biden had won, then “gavels President Trump as re-elected”.

The Eastman memo, first revealed by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, goes on to predict “howls” of protest from Democrats. The theory was that Pence, acting as the “ultimate arbiter” of the process, would then send the matter to the House of Representatives which, following an arcane rule that says that where no candidate has reached the necessary majority each state will have one vote, also decides to turn the world upside down and hand the election to the losing candidate, Donald Trump.

Eastman’s by now notorious memo, and the surreal encounter in the Oval Office, are among the central twists in the unfolding story of Trump’s audacious bid to hang on to power. They form the basis of what critics argue was nothing less than an attempted electoral coup.

[Attorney John Eastman speaks to Trump supporters gathered on 6 January 2021 to challenge the election results.

John Eastman speaks at the Trump rally on 6 January. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters]

:{In an interview with the Guardian, Eastman explained that he had been asked to prepare the memo by one of Trump’s “legal shop” [CLETA?] . :{“They said can you focus first on the theory of what happens if there are not enough electoral votes certified. So I focused on that. But I said: ‘This is not my recommendation. I will have a fuller memo to you in a week outlining all of the various scenarios.’”}:

Inside the Oval Office, with the countdown on to 6 January, Trump urged Pence to listen closely to Eastman. “This guy’s a really respected constitutional lawyer,” the president said, according to the book I Alone Can Fix It.

:{:{}:

Eastman, a member of the influential rightwing Federalist Society, told the Guardian that he made clear to both men that the account he had laid out in the short memo was not his preferred option. “The advice I gave the vice-president very explicitly was that I did not think he had the authority simply to declare which electors to count” or to “simply declare Trump re-elected”.

Eastman continued: “The vice-president turned to me directly and said, ‘Do you think I have such powers?’ I said, ‘I think it’s the weaker argument.’”}:

Instead, Eastman pointed to one of the scenarios in the longer six-page memo that he had prepared – “war-gaming” alternatives. His favorite was that the vice-president could adjourn the joint session of Congress on 6 January and send the electoral college votes back to states that Trump claimed he had lost unfairly so their legislatures could have another go at rooting out the fraud and illegality the president had been railing about since election day.

“My advice to the vice-president was to allow the states formally to assess the impact of what they had determined were clear illegalities in the conduct of the election,” Eastman said. After a delay of a week or 10 days, if they found sufficient fraud to affect the result, they could then send Trump electors back to Congress in place of the previous Biden ones.

The election would then be overturned.

“Those votes are counted and TRUMP WINS,” Eastman wrote in his longer memo, adding brashly: “BOLD, certainly … but we’re no longer playing by Queensbury rules.” [IF WE DO IT OR AS HE'S WRITING? IS HE SUGGESTING BIG LIE IS TRUE, THUS OK TO CHEAT/BREAK LAW?]

Eastman insisted to the Guardian that he had only been presenting scenarios to the vice-president, not advice. He said that since news of his memos broke he had become the victim of a “false narrative put out there to make it look as though Pence had been asked to do something egregiously unconstitutional, so he was made to look like a white knight coming in to stop this authoritarian Trump”. [MARK MARTIN?]

The problem is that for many close observers of American elections, Eastman’s presentation to Pence just two days before the vice-president was set to certify Biden’s victory leaves a very different impression.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Centerfor Justice at New York University, a leading authority on US election issues, sees Eastman’s set of alternative scenarios as nothing less than a “fairly detailed roadmap for a constitutional coup d’état. That memo was a plan for a series of tricks to steal the presidency for Trump.”

The 2020 presidential election was the largest in US history, with a record 156 million votes cast and the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1900. By all official accounts, it was also among the most secure and well-conducted in US history.

:{:{}:

“It was something of a civil miracle,” Waldman said. “To have this massive turnout, an election that was extraordinarily well run, in the middle of a pandemic – this was one of America’s finest hours in terms of our democracy.”}:

And yet, Waldman went on, what happened next? “Trump’s big lie, his campaign to overturn the election, the insurrection.”

Alarm bells began to ring months before America went to the polls on 3 November 2020. As early as July Trump was laying into mail-in voting, which was seeing huge voter take-up as a result of Covid-19, deriding the upcoming poll as the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and calling for it to be delayed.

At the time, Biden was holding a steady opinion poll lead over Trump in battleground states.

By September, Trump was refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. He told reporters: “We’re going to have to see what happens.”

When we did see what happened – Biden winning the presidency by a relatively convincing margin – Trump refused to concede. Now, something that had only been posited as a remote and extreme possibility was unfolding before Americans’ eyes.

“The events of 2020 were unprecedented,” said Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University. “A sitting president was trying to get a second term that the voters didn’t want him to have – it was an effort to overturn a free election and deprive the American people of their verdict.”

Since the violent incidents of 6 January when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people, information has begun to amass about Trump’s extensive ploy to undo American democracy. Congressional investigations by the US House and Senate have added granular detail that has astonished even seasoned election-watchers in terms of the scale and complexity of the endeavour.

For Foley, a picture has come into focus of a “systematic effort to deny the voters their democratic choice. It was a deliberate, orchestrated campaign, and there’s nothing more fundamentally undemocratic than what was attempted.”

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written a report on 2020 election subversion, said that as time has passed the scope of Trump’s ambition has become clear. “There was much more behind the scenes than we knew about. We came much closer to a political and constitutional crisis than we realized,” he said.

Trump supporters attended a rally in Washington on 6 January 2021 to overturn the election results and keep Trump in office.

The rally at the Capitol.‘Be there, will be wild!’ Trump had exhorted his followers. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

In his Guardian interview, Eastman justified his Oval Office presentation to Pence on scenarios of how to overturn an election by pointing to widespread irregularities in the 2020 voting process. He claimed there were “violations of election law by state or county election officials” and “good, unrebutted evidence of fraud”.

Asked how he would answer the charge that has been levelled at him that he had sketched out an electoral coup, he replied: “That begs the question: was there illegality and fraud? If there was, and it altered the results of the election, then that undermines democracy, as we have someone put in office who has not been elected.”

But why would such widespread fraudulent activity be directed against Trump and not, say, Biden, or before him Barack Obama? Eastman said that it was because Trump was “pushing back against the deep state in American politics”.

The “deep state” had become such an entrenched bureaucracy that it was “unaccountable to the ultimate sovereign authority of the American people”, Eastman said. “Trump’s punching back had all of the forces aligned with that entrenched bureaucracy doing everything to stop him.”

Contrary to Eastman’s claim that widespread fraud occurred during the election, all the main federal and state authorities charged with safeguarding the 2020 election, including law enforcement, have declared it historically secure. In several instances, that conclusion was reached by Trump’s own hand-picked Republican officials.

[Then President Trump shakes hands with Chris Krebs, who was put in charge of protecting the integrity of the 2020 election. Trump would later fire Krebs for rejecting Trump’s claims of election fraud.

Trump shakes hands with Chris Krebs, who was put in charge of protecting the integrity of the election. After Krebs vouched that the election was historically secure, he was fired. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

They included Chris Krebs, who had been appointed by Trump to be director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) in charge of protecting the integrity of the 2020 election. On 12 November, Cisa put out a joint statement from election security officials that found the presidential vote to be “the most secure in American history”.

Five days later Krebs was out of a job. “He fired me by Twitter,” Krebs told the Guardian. “One of Trump’s own nominees saying the election was legitimate was a credibility issue for him. What he did to me shows there were lengths to which the former president would go which were well beyond any previous norms.”

Bill Barr, then US attorney general, was another Trump appointee who challenged the false claims of mass election fraud. Two days after the election, Barr bowed to pressure from the president and allowed federal prosecutors to investigate allegations of voting irregularities, a break with a longstanding justice department norm that prevented prosecutors from interfering in active election counts.

Yet later in November, Barr met Trump at the White House and told him bluntly, according to Peril, that stories of widespread illegality were “just bullshit”. Then, on 1 December, the attorney general told Associated Press that the FBI and prosecutors had found no fraud on a scale sufficient to impact the election result.

Barr stood down as the nation’s top prosecutor two weeks later.

Another prominent Republican lawyer who thoroughly rejects Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen from him isBen Ginsberg. For almost four decades, Ginsberg was at the center of major election legal battles as counsel to the Republican National Committee as well as to four of the last six Republican presidential nominees, through his law firm, Trump included.

Ginsberg was also a central figure in the white-hot recount in Florida in 2000 that handed the White House to George W Bush.

“What we’ve seen has been different from anything in my experience, because Donald Trump has made an assertion about our elections being fraudulent and the results rigged,” Ginsberg told the Guardian. “I know from my 38 years of conducting election-day operations that that simply is not true, there is no evidence for it. What Donald Trump is saying is destructive to the democracy at its very foundations.”

Ginsberg likened Trump to an arsonist firefighter. “He is setting a fire deliberately so that he can be the hero to put it out. The problem is that there is no real fire, there is no systemic election fraud. The destruction is unnecessary.”

Trump’s campaign to subvert the election began with a flurry of tweets after election day. The New York Times calculated that in the three weeks from 3 November he attacked the legitimacy of the election to his vast social media following more than 400 times.

In the past few weeks, as congressional investigations have deepened, it has become clear that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result were much more extensive and multi-layered than his Twitter rages. “This wasn’t just some crazy tweets,” Waldman said. “There was a concerted effort to push at every level to find ways to cling to power, even though he had lost.”

Politico estimated that in the month after the election, the sitting president reached out to at least 31 Republicans at all levels of government, from governors to state lawmakers, members of Congress to local election officials. Such was the obsessive attention to detail, the sitting US president even called the Republican chairwoman of the board of canvassers in Wayne county, Michigan, to encourage her not to certify Biden’s victory in a heavily Democratic area.

At the centre of the operation was a ragtag bunch of lawyers assembled by Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who was acting as Trump’s personal attorney. Few of the team had experience in election law; Barr referred to them, according to Peril, as a “clown car”.

Among the comical conspiracy theories amplified by Giuliani and the Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell was “Italygate”, the idea that an Italian defense company used satellites to flip votes from Trump to Biden.

Such florid fantasies, and the accompanying absence of hard and credible data, did little to endear Trump’s legal team to the courts. By the end of December, 61 lawsuits had been lodged by Trump and his acolytes in courts ranging from local jurisdictions right up to the US supreme court. Of those, only one succeeded, on a minor technicality.

Yet the epic failure to persuade judges to play along with Trump’s efforts at subversion should not disguise the seriousness of the endeavour, nor how far it was allowed to proceed. “What I find most disturbing is how far this plot got with such thin material to work with,” Foley said.

One of the most alarming aspects of the fraud conspiracy theories peddled around Trump was that so many senior Republicans and the Republican party itself endorsed them.

On 19 November, Powell was invited to appear in front of cameras at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. Four days earlier, the Trump campaign had circulated an internal memo that thoroughly debunked a bizarre claim championed by Powell – that Biden’s victory was the product of a communist plot. Yet Powell went ahead nonetheless, using her RNC platform to double down on the palpably false claim that Dominion voting machines created by Venezuela’s deceased president Hugo Chávez (they weren’t) had been manipulated to redirect Trump votes to Biden (they hadn’t).

Complicity in the lie of the stolen election reached right to the heart of the Republican party. Even on 6 January, while shattered glass lay strewn across the corridors of Congress following the violent insurrection hours earlier, 139 House Republicans – more than half the total in the chamber – and eight Senate Republicans went ahead and voted to block the certification of Biden’s win.

Many other Republicans also acted as passive accomplices in Trump’s subversion plot, by failing publicly to speak out against it. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the US Senate, waited until 15 December to recognize Biden as president-elect.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sits in the House Chamber hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to halt Congress from ratifying the election results.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, in the chamber hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. McConnell waited until 15 December to recognize Biden. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty

For six weeks, McConnell watched and waited. He remained silent, as every day the big lie grew stronger, amplified through the echo chambers ofFox News, the far-right OANN news network and a web of Trump benefactors including the MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell.

Ginsberg told the Guardian that “the greatest disappointment to me personally is seeing people I know to be principled, with only the best intentions for the country, stand aside as Donald Trump wreaks havoc through American democracy. I don’t understand that, and I think it has really negative ramifications.”

Ginsberg added: “Many of them are guilt-ridden about that. It is a very unfortunate, disappointing situation.”

On 7 November, the Associated Press called Pennsylvania, and with it the presidency, for Biden. At that point, Trump’s efforts to subvert the election went into hyper-drive.

“Trump appeared to think he had a viable path to staying in power,” said Hasen. “His outlook morphed into an actual attempt to use the claims of fraud to try and overturn the election.”

Trump turned to what has been dubbed the “independent state legislature doctrine”. This is a convoluted legal theory that has been increasingly embraced by the right wing of the Republican party.

Those who adhere to the doctrine point to the section of the US constitution that gives state legislatures the power to set election rules and to determine the “manner” in which presidential electors are chosen under the electoral college system. If those rules are changed by other legal entities without the approval of the state legislatures, then, the theory goes, election counts can be deemed illegitimate and an alternate slate of electors imposed.

“It’s an extreme legal theory that does not depend on fraud but on claimed irregularities between the way 2020 was conducted and how the states had set up the election,” Hasen said.

Trump and his legal advisers began bearing down on critical swing states which Biden had won, attempting to browbeat state legislators into taking up the doctrine and using it as a means of overturning the result. Lawmakers in Arizona, Pennsylvania and other battleground states were encouraged to call a special session to highlight the disparities in election procedures, with the end goal being to replace Biden’s presidential electors with an alternate slate of Trump electors.

In his Guardian interview, Eastman said he was part of this effort. “I recommended that the legislatures be called into special session to assess the impact of the illegality. If there were cumulative illegal actions greater than the margin of victory, then the legislature needed to take the power back.”

A month before Eastman gave his presentation to Trump and Pence in the Oval Office, he appeared before the Georgia legislature. By that point Georgia had already held a full hand recount of the almost 5m votes cast and was poised to announce the results of a third count – all of which confirmed Biden had won.

In a half-hour presentation on 3 December, Eastman called on Georgia’s lawmakers to effectively take the law into their own hands. “You could adopt a slate of electors yourselves,” he told them. “I don’t think it’s just your authority to do that, but, quite frankly, I think you have a duty to do that to protect the integrity of the election in Georgia.”

And then Trump took the fight to the next level: into the heart of US law enforcement. An interim report from the Senate judiciary committee published earlier this month chronicles the bombardment to which senior Department of Justice officials were subjected in the days leading up to 6 January.

It is a fundamental DoJ norm that the president and his allies should never interfere in any investigation, let alone to undermine American democracy. Yet the Senate report shows that on the day after Barr’s departure was announced, 15 December, Trump began ratcheting up pressure on his replacement to try to get him to adopt the big lie.

When Jeffrey Rosen, the new acting attorney general, demurred, Trump turned to a relatively lowly justice official, Jeffrey Clark, and propelled him into the thick of a mounting power struggle that had the potential to turn into a full-blown constitutional crisis. Clark, who was recently subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection, drew up a draft letter which he intended to have sent out to six critical swing states.

In essence, it called on state legislatures won by Biden to throw out the official will of the people and reverse it for Trump.

When Rosen refused to authorize the letter, Trump prepared to fire him and put Clark in his place. It took a showdown in the Oval Office at which key justice department officials threatened to resign en masse, accompanied even by the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, before Trump stood his threat down.

That volatile three-hour meeting on 3 January was one of the most dramatic incidents in which US democracy was pushed to the brink of collapse. It was not the only one.

As the clock ticked down towards Trump’s final appointment with fate on 6 January, he grew more and more agitated. On 27 December, he called Rosen to make another attempt at cajoling the justice department to come on board with his subversion plot.

Handwritten notes taken by Rosen’s deputy record an astonishing exchange:

:{:{Rosen: “Understand that the DoJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way.”}:

Trump: “Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] congressmen.”}:

Then, on 2 January, Trump made his by now notorious call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official as secretary of state. A recording of the conversation obtained by the Washington Post captured Trump telling Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes” – one more vote than Biden’s margin of victory in the official count.

Raffensperger politely rejected the request. Four days later, Pence turned his back on Eastman’s scenarios, and announced that he would do his constitutional duty and certify Biden as the 46th president of the United States.

:{:{}:

Trump had run out of road. He had nothing left, nowhere else to turn. Nothing, that is, except for his adoring, credulous and increasingly angry supporters.

“Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump exhorted his followers in a now excised tweet.}:

Just how direct was Trump’s involvement in inciting the insurrection is now the stuff of a House select committee inquiry. The committee is aggressively pursuing Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist in the White House, over any role he might have played in the buildup towards the violence.

:{:{}:

Bannon, who faces criminal charges for defying congressional subpoenas, was among a gathering at theWillard Hotel in Washington on the eve of 6 January that the House committee has dubbed the “war room”. Also present were Giuliani and Eastman. According to Peril, Trump called into the meeting and spoke with Bannon, expressing his disgust over Pence’s refusal to play along and block the certification just as Eastman had outlined.}:

When 6 January finally arrived, all eyes were on the Ellipse, the park flanking the White House where Trump was set to headline a massive “Stop the Steal” rally. Before he spoke, Eastman said a few words.

The law professor recounted one of his more lurid conspiracy theories – that voting machines had secret compartments built within them where pristine ballots were held until they were needed to increase Biden’s numbers and put him over the top. “They unload the ballots and match them to the unvoted voter and … voilà!”

Then Trump took the stage. He encouraged his thousands of followers to march to the Capitol. “Fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”

The Guardian asked Eastman whether he had any regrets about what happened, personal or otherwise.A week after the insurrection he was pressured into stepping down from his post at Chapman University in California.

“Regrets, yes, that people are taking action against me for telling the truth,” he said. “Regrets that I told the truth and that I continue to do so? Absolutely not.”

Eastman’s pledge to continue “telling the truth” will not soothe the anxieties of those concerned about American democracy. Already, speculation about another Trump run in 2024 is causing jitters.

Liz Cheney, a member of the House committee inquiry into the insurrection, has issued a stark warning to her Republican colleagues. Unless they start really telling the truth, she has told them, and countering the lies about election fraud, the country is on the path of “national self-destruction”.

Rick Hasen shares her fears. “Donald Trump has been underestimated before,” he said. “He is telling us he’s planning on running. He’s continuing to claim the election was stolen. The situation in the United States right now is desperate.”

[The January 6 committee hearings are laying out, in painstaking detail, one of the most dramatic days in the history of America’s democracy, when a president and his supporters set out to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. The Guardian has covered the investigation into the attack with determination, delivering scoop after scoop detailing efforts by the former president and his allies to overturn a free and fair election.

America’s democracy is facing a stress test, from an ongoing campaign to dilute the power of minority voters to the “big lie” advocates seeking offices that would allow them to control elections. In the past the US has often cast doubt on elections around the world – now the threat to free and fair elections is closer to home. America is facing down the barrel of a ballot-box coup. We need your continued help to highlight just how fragile democracy can be.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/john-eastman-2020/

The Trump advisor who wrote the infamous pseudo-legal justification for overturning the 2020 election also helped to create a blueprint for what Donald Trump could do to hang onto power by force.

---

artl on SJ field does not mention SPRR; tho natural rights // clarence, --> Lochner ~ new deal?

---

2/21

rALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – President Donald Trump believed his vice president had the power to overturn the election following a conversation with a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, the New York Times reports.

In the days leading up to the election, Trump was certain Vice President Mike Pence could legally overturn the election results as Congress gathered in a joint session to tally the votes of the Electoral College.

The Times said Trump told Pence that Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, said the vice president had the power to hand the election to the president.

However last Wednesday, Pence acknowledged that he did not have the power to unilaterally throw out electoral college votes as Trump and some of his attorneys had wrongly insisted.

Martin, a registered Republican, spent more than 20 years on the North Carolina Supreme Court before resigning in February 2019 to become dean of Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach.

Pence said the count “shall be deemed a sufficient declaration” of Biden’s victory, but offered no words of congratulations to the incoming administration. It capped an extraordinary day of chaos, violence, and division after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, sending lawmakers into hiding and delaying the proceeding.

Under normal circumstances, the vote-tallying procedure would be a mere formality — the final step in the complicated technical process of electing a new administration.

But after losing court case after court case and with no further options at hand, Trump and his allies had zeroed in on Jan. 6 as their last-ditch chance to try to influence the outcome.

---

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/5-takeaways-jan-6-hearing-trumps-doj-plot/

wapo

June 23, 2022

In the Jan. 6 committee hearing on June 23, witnesses described how President Donald Trump pressured the Justice Department to investigate election fraud. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post, Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

The Jan. 6 committee on Thursday held its fifth major hearing, this one focused on President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on the Justice Department to help him overturn the election.

The plot was spearheaded within the department by an official named Jeffrey Clark, whose home federal agents searched Wednesday in a significant development that reflects the increasing legal jeopardy faced by Trump’s allies and perhaps Trump himself. Trump at one point considered installing Clark as acting attorney general to further the plot — which prompted mass resignation threats....

The Jan. 6 committee on Thursday held its fifth major hearing, this one focused on President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on the Justice Department to help him overturn the election.

Timeline: Trump's pressure on the Justice Department to overturn the election

Below, some takeaways from the hearing.

The pardon picture, filled out

In a video presented on June 23, Trump White House officials said that at least five House Republicans asked President Donald Trump for pardons. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

The committee has repeatedly previewed evidence that certain key players in Trump’s plot soughtpardons. Last week, one of them was revealed to be Trump lawyer John Eastman, who asked to be put on “the pardon list.” The implication from that email was that there was indeed a list that seemingly might have other names.

The committee built out its own list Thursday, adding several House Republicans to it. Here are the names and the evidence:

Reps. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — In a Jan. 11 email from Brooks, he said he and Gaetz were suggesting pardons for everyone who objected to the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. White House lawyer Eric Herschmann also said he believed that Gaetz had requested a pardon. White House aide John McEntee said Gaetz told him he asked for one from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows, also testified to the effort by Brooks and Gaetz, saying that Gaetz had been seeking a pardon “since early December” and that he reached out to her personally.

Days after the Capitol attack and the final attempt to overturn the election, Members of Congress requested pardons.

Five days after the attack on the Capitol, Representative Mo Brooks requested pardons for himself, Representative Gaetz, and others. pic.twitter.com/f0xLm5SKtT

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 23, 2022

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) — Hutchinson testified that he requested a pardon.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) — Hutchinson testified that he requested a pardon.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — Hutchinson said that she had heard that Greene had asked the White House counsel’s office for a pardon from deputy counsel Pat Philbin but that Greene hadn’t asked her personally.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — Hutchinson testified that he requested a pardon.

Perry has flatly denied seeking a pardon, calling it “a shameless, soulless lie,” but Hutchinson said he talked to her directly about it.

Hutchinson also said that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whom House Republicans tried to put on the committee before Democrats objected, talked with the White House about congressional pardons but that she was unaware of him asking for one.

What John Eastman and ‘the pardon list’ means

Asking for a pardon doesn’t equal admitting guilt,[but in applying you must tell what you did? negates exec priv] and Eastman in particular argued that his request was meant as a precaution. But given how far-fetched this plot was and how often those involved were told their plot was illegal, that fact that people were trying to cover their backsides on the way out is important.

And crucially, some of these requests came even before the plot failed on Jan. 6.

A new link between Trump and Justice Dept. plotters?

At another point, the committee indicated for apparently the first time that there might have been coordination in the plotting between Trump’s legal team and certain members of the Justice Department.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) shared a Dec. 28 email from longtimeOhio Republican Party politician Ken Blackwellrecommending a briefing for Vice President Mike Pence from Eastman and former Trump aide Kenneth Klukowski, who had recently joined the Justice Department. The email added that “we want to make sure we don’t overexpose Ken, given his new position.”

Klukowski has already been implicated in helping draft Clark’s draft letter seeking to have the Justice Department legitimize Trump’s false voter-fraud claims. This would indicate more of a link between that Justice Department effort and the Trump legal team.

“This email suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the vice president to overturn the election,” Cheney said.

The Jan. 6 committee connects two strands of Trump’s effort to retain power

We know elements of Trump’s legal team and the Justice Department plotted in different ways. But this suggests there might have been more coordination in the entire plot than we know. That’s particularly remarkable, given how much this effort within the Justice Department wasn’t sanctioned by superiors and how it would amount to government lawyers working with political aides to subvert democracy.

Stay tuned to this space.

Clark was warned about illegality, too

Justice Department officials recalled how President Donald Trump discussed replacing acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen days before the Jan. 6 attack. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Yet again, we have been presented with evidence that those involved in this plot were told they would be breaking the law — and by no less than their own colleagues and allies.

This time, it was Clark.

Early in the hearing, the committee again played video of Herschmann’s testimony. In the clip, Herschmann said he offered a vulgar response when Clark laid out his plan to have the Justice Department intervene in the election dispute.

“When he finished discussing what he planned on doing, I said: … ‘Congratulations, you’ve just admitted your first step you’d take as attorney general would be committing a felony and violating Rule 6(e). You’re clearly the right candidate for this job.’”

Precisely which portion of Clark’s plan this referred to or why Herschmann thought it would break the law wasn’t clear, which is relevant. (Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) prohibits a government attorney from disclosing matters occurring before a grand jury.)

But yet again, we know of people who might otherwise be sympathetic to Trump telling those involved in the plot that what they were advocating was illegal.

Herschmann previously said Rudy Giuliani admitted that their plan probably wouldn’t hold up in court. And Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) testified that he told Giuliani that Giuliani was asking him to violate the law by overturning Arizona’s results. There is also a volume of evidence that Eastman also knew what he was advocating was illegal, including by his own admission.

All of this plays into efforts to argue that this plot was “corrupt,” which is a key element of the law the Jan. 6 committee has focused on.

Another Justice Dept. official testified he debunked fraud claims to Trump

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on June 23 described President Donald Trump's pressure to find an attorney general to back his election lies. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

The other key element that the committee has keyed on while trying to prove corruption is how much Trump was told his voter-fraud claims were false. The committee has shown extensive evidence that Attorney General William P. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told him that — both broadly and when it came to multiple specific claims Trump made.

On Thursday, Barr’s successor as acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, said he told Trump much the same thing on his first day on the job in late December 2020.

“He thought the election had been stolen or was corrupt and that there was widespread fraud,” Rosen said. “And I had told him that our reviews had not shown that to be the case.”

Donoghue, who testified in person, also said Clark was told that his allegations — specifically, on foreign interference — were baseless and that he was briefed on that by the director of national intelligence.

But he said Clark pressed ahead with trying to get the draft letter sent anyway.

“We thought perhaps once it was explained to him that there was no basis for that part of his concern, that he would retreat,” Donoghue said. “But instead he doubled down and said: ‘Well, okay, so there’s no foreign interference. I still think there are enough allegations out there that we should go ahead and send this letter.’ Which shocked me even more than the initial one, because you would think after a couple of days of looking at this, he like we would have come to the same conclusion that it was completely unfounded.”

Donoghue has said he repeatedly told Clark that what he was doing was tantamount to having the Justice Department meddle in the presidential election. Donoghue said Clark responded, “I think a lot of people meddled in this election.”

Again, all of this comes back to corrupt intent — that those involved knew what they were saying was false and even illegal, and pressed forward anyway.

5. Everyone hates Jeff Clark

Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general, criticized former justice department official Jeffery Clark's qualifications in a video on June 23. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

It’s already been a bad week for Clark, and it got no better Thursday. In addition to having his role in the plot detailed so extensively and having his home searched, it became clear how little regard his fellow government lawyers had for him.

Herschmann said in a video clip: “I thought Jeff’s proposal was nuts. I said, 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 sure if you know that.’ ”

Donoghue recalled a meeting that involved both Trump and Clark:

And so I said, ‘Mr. President, you’re talking about putting a man in that seat who has never tried a criminal case, who’s never conducted a criminal investigation. He’s telling you that he’s going to take charge of the department — 115,000 employees, including the entire FBI, and turn the place on a dime and conduct a nationwide criminal investigations that will produce results in a matter of days? It’s impossible. It’s absurd. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to fail. He has never been in front of a trial jury, a grand jury. He’s never even been to [FBI Director Christopher] Wray’s office.’ … ‘It’s not going to happen. He’s not competent.’

Donoghue was asked whether anyone in the room thought Clark had the appropriate background or supported Clark as acting attorney general. He responded: “No one.”

The picture painted was of a dilettante being completely out of his depth and striving for power by any means necessary.

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new 5 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/john-eastmans-latest-legal-filing-reveals-dual-role-fox-news-hosts-service

Politico reported Friday that John Eastman, the disgraced ex-law professor who formulated many of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was also apparently in communication with Fox News host Mark Levin.The story gets even more interesting from there, revealing the shell game that right-wing media personalities engage in while doubling as political operatives.

Eastman’s contention, however, is that he was not communicating with Mark Levin the media personality, which would forfeit attorney-client privilege on those communications. Instead, he was speaking with Mark Levin the attorney, and formulating legal strategies regarding the election.

A quick law lesson: The “dual role”

The brief acknowledges that Eastman could find no previous instance in law having to do with media figures who were also attorneys, but it argues to extend this doctrine accordingly.

Eastman’s legal and media “hats” collide

Most notably, Eastman first came to Trump’s attention via an appearance on Levin’s Fox show back in May 2019, in which Eastman argued that Trump had the power as president to fire people who were investigating him. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” Eastman argued — even including an investigation involving the president himself.

And while Eastman was advising Trump on his theories of reversing the election results, he also advanced those ideas on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s show.

Levin uses his media platform to push far-right legal theories

then on January 3, 2021, Levin said on his Fox show that it was Congress’ job to choose who won the presidential election — and he claimed members of Congress would be “shredding the Constitution” if they didn’t reject Biden’s victory.

the dirty secret of right-wing media: They’re all in the “dual role”

The examples abound. Most notoriously, there is Sean Hannity’s true role as a Republican operative and Trump’s “shadow” chief of staff, while leveraging his media presence to assist his favored political candidates. Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo scripted her TV interview with Trump to aid his effort to overturn the election results, and recently used her show to spread a COVID-19 conspiracy theoryshe apparently picked up from a Republican Senate candidate. And of course, numerous Fox News personalities have a long-running track record of appearing at Republican campaign rallies and fundraisers.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/proof-congressional-republicans-subvert-election/

a recording made by a disgruntled election conspiracist is the strongest evidence yet that operatives in Donald Trump’s orbit summoned supporters to Washington on January 6 for the express purpose of coercing lawmakers into overturning the 2020 election.

News broke late Tuesday afternoon, whereupon this bombshell of a story was promptly buried under an avalanche of other news.

The main characters aren’t household names, but this story is every bit as important as the earlier revelation that Donald Trump, Jr, was pushing a detailed plan for a coup to his father’s chief of staff before the election had even been decided. And it’s even more important than the late-breaking news that Sen. Mike Lee talked up Trump lawyer John Eastman’s plan for a procedural coup in late November.

The star of the secret recording is Jason Sullivan, one-time aide to dirty trickster and longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone.

Sullivan told the Times he was invited to speak by a group of anti-vaccine activists, who were planning a permitted event in the capital on J6. (By amazing coincidence, Stone was scheduled to speak at an anti-vax event on the afternoon of J6, an engagement he missed, for reasons that are surely of great interest to the J6 committee.)

The call was made a week before the insurrection.

Sullivan repeatedly urged the other callers to intimidate the lawmakers who were meeting to certify the election. He told them they needed to make them feel like the people were “breathing down their neck.”

“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” Sullivan said.

“We have to put that pressure there.”

This recording was made by a woman named Staci Burk, a former school board official turned election conspiracist. Burk filed an anonymous affidavit supporting one of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s many election conspiracy theories. Whereupon heavily armed paramilitary operatives calling themselves the 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP) moved into her home for several weeks, ostensibly to guard her. Burk told the Times a 1AP member joined the call, and she made the recording because the armed men were making her feel unsafe. Members of 1AP were in the capital during the insurrection and members of the group have been subpoenaed by the J6 committee.

This recording partially corroborates previous claims by Ali Alexander, another one of Roger Stone’s associates. He said he schemed with members of the Congress to gather a crowd to pressure lawmakers into overturning the election during the certification ceremony.

In a video made before the insurrection, Ali Alexander claimed that he and US Reps. Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar “schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

The video circulated on social media but was later deleted. The plan was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” Ali Alexander said.

The Sullivan call proves there was an inside-outside game on J6.

The inside game was the procedural coup devised by John Eastman that was unfolding inside the Capitol on J6 as GOP legislators raised spurious claims of election fraud to overturn a free and fair election.

The outside game was the mob deliberately assembled in order to pressure legislators to go along with Trump’s illegal scheme.

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'Coup in search of a legal theory': Judge delivers damning rebuke — orders Eastman to hand over docs

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/john-eastman-2657052274/

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an 3 22 tom b raw story

According to a report from Politico, attorney John Eastman -- who was leading the charge to overturn 2020 presidential election results that ousted Donald Trump from the White House -- is receiving new scrutiny over his relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas.

In light of revelations about texts being exchanged between Ginni Thomas and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, where the wife of the Supreme Court justice was passing on conspiracy theories and urging the Trump's inner circle to do what they could to remain in power, one member of the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection said he has some questions for Eastman.

As Kyle Cheney reports, "Eastman spent the final weeks of Trump’s presidency driving a strategy to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, a plan that relied on legal theories so extreme the Jan. 6 select committee says they could amount to criminal conspiracy and fraud," before adding, "The select committee has evidence that when a top Pence aide challenged Eastman’s plan on Jan. 4, 2021, Eastman initially told him he believed two Supreme Court justices would back him up. One of them was Ginni Thomas’ husband, Justice Clarence Thomas."

Politico is reporting that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is raising concerns about Eastman and Justice Thomas.

"Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told POLITICO that the new details raise important questions about whether Eastman had a specific reason to believe Justice Thomas would support his radical gambit, or if he was simply voicing a hunch," Cheney wrote before noting, "Eastman’s attorney Charles Burnham did not respond to questions about whether Eastman maintained ties to the Thomases or communicated with either of them in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 defeat. There’s no known evidence that Eastman was directly in touch with either of the Thomases during his campaign to pressure Pence to subvert the results."

According to Politico, "Eastman had reason to know Thomas’ views well: He clerked for the George H.W. Bush appointee in the 1990s before becoming a mainstay in deeply conservative legal circles."

The report goes to note that when investigators asked Eastman if he had any reason to believe that the Supreme Court would support his plan to have former vice president Mike Pence refuse to certify the election and throw it back to the states, his response was to plead the 5th Amendment.

What has raised red flags was testimony from Pence lawyer Greg Jacob who told the committee that Eastman had told him that at least two Supreme Court justices might support his plan, with Jacob saying he couldn't recall if Eastman named the other justice.

You can read more here.

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3 22

John Eastman, former President Donald Trump's lawyer, was well aware that it was unlawful to obstruct the Electoral College certification of President Joe Biden's election victory, new reports reveal.

According to The Guardian, Eastman GUK admitted in an email that the plot was a violation of the Electoral Count Act but advised former Vice President Mike Pence to move forward with the agenda anyway.

Per The Guardian: "The email exchange – revealed in court filings by the select committee last week – shows Eastman attempted to take advantage of the fact that the Electoral Count Act was not followed exactly in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack to try and benefit Trump."

“The Senate and House have both violated the Electoral Count Act this evening – they debated the Arizona objections for more than two hours. Violation of 3 USC 17,” Eastman wrote.

Eastman is also said to have pressured the former vice president's to support the flawed agenda describing it as "only a 'minor violation' of the statute that governed the certification procedure."

In a second portion of the email, Eastman attempted to justify his actions arguing that "the statute had already been violated in small ways – delays that amounted to a few hours at best – Pence should have no problem committing 'one more minor violation and adjourn for 10 days.'"

Eastman’s email is deeply significant because it suggests he "knew the scheme to delay Biden’s certification was unlawful – which the select committee believes bolsters its case that he was involved in a conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress," GUK The Guardian reports.

House Counsel Douglas Letter also weighed in with his take on Eastman’s actions and what he requested of Pence.

“It was so minor it could have changed the entire course of our democracy," Letter noted. "It could have meant the popularly elected president could have been thwarted from taking office. That was what Dr. Eastman was urging.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/donald-trump-john-eastman-crimes/

roger knew

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trms jamie said judge asked 1/6 comm to weigh in on crimes b/c has to decide if eastman has atty -cli priv, but crime negates

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3 22

John Eastman, who previously worked as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, is facing pressure from the House Select Committee overseeing the investigation of the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol to surrender records that contain specific keywords in compliance with his subpoena.

According to The Guardian, GUK the keyword terms are said to shed light on Eastman's role in the alleged conspiracy lawmakers are investigating to uncover. "The keyword search list – which the select committee transmitted to Eastman – provides a glimpse of what House investigators suspect might be contained among the thousands of emails and documents that Eastman is being forced to review to comply with his subpoena."

An inside source with knowledge of the investigation has revealed "The list is intended to act as a dragnet to catch his records from 4 to 7 January about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results between Eastman and individuals in different 'centres of gravity.'”

In addition to the committee's investigation into Eastman's search terms, the lawmakers are also investigating several Republican congressional members. Those lawmakers include Sens. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.); and Reps. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Doug Mastriano (R-Penn.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and Scott Perry (R-Calif.).

Another focus for the committee will be on Eastman's communications with members of the federal government. That list includes emails under the following domains: “'usdoj.gov' and 'justice.gov' for the justice department, 'senate.gov' for the Senate, and 'house.gov' for the House."

The latest development follows House Select Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson's (D-Miss.) move to issue automatic subpoenas for specific documents and testimonies. As the investigation moves forward, the committee has expanded its scope. Following that move, Thompson said, “We keep adding to the list of people we need to talk to. That’s grown the body of work."

===

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/john-eastman-docs/

asserts atty client priv

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devos 180

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/betsy-devos/

no lnx

Betsy DeVos’ foundation is giving $640,000 to right wing group whose 'scholar' wrote Trump-Pence coup memos

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement January 12, 2022

The foundation belonging to anti-public school activist and former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband, is handing a right wing group, The Claremont Institute, $640,000.

“The Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation donated $240,000 to Claremont in 2020 and approved another $400,000 to be paid out in the future, tax records show,” Rolling Stone reports in an article titled, “Revealed: The Billionaires Funding the Coup’s Brain Trust.”

The Claremont Institute is home to John Eastman, who was best known (and currently serves) as the chairman of the anti-LGBTQ organization NOM, the National Organization For Marriage. Eastman agreed to “retire” as a law professor at the Chapman University School of Law exactly one week after he delivered a speech, on stage with Rudy Giuliani, at Donald Trump’s rally that preceded the violent and deadly January 6 insurrection.

But only later would Americans learn that John Eastman was the architect and author of several documents, now called the “coup memos,” detailing how Vice President Mike Pence could, effectively, steal the election for Donald Trump on the fateful day of the insurrection.

Eastman continues to serve as a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute, and in his role as the Founding Director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

The Bulwark, founded by prominent conservative never-Trumpers, last year wrote: “That Claremont has been unparalleled in its intellectual submission to Trumpism should give us pause.”

In 2019, Claremont welcomed as a Lincoln Fellow the conspiracist and “ king of fake news” Jack Michael Posobiec III. Posobiec, already well known as a promoter of the Pizzagate hoax and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, was then working as a correspondent and host for the One America News Network (OANN), which became one of the major promoters of false claims about the 2020 election. Claremont remains proud of the affiliation with Posobiec, with an institute official recently calling him “one of the best public political voices in America”—just days before it was revealed that a right-wing website Posobiec frequently promoted was a Russian disinformation project.

And among the latest crop of Lincoln Fellows is Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing youth-mobilizing group Turning Point USA. Kirk bragged about sending “80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight” for Trump on January 6. After his slimy “Falkirk Center,” co-founded with Jerry Falwell Jr., imploded, Kirk was ousted from Liberty University. The Claremont Institute has welcomed him with open arms.

As Americans now know, Eastman also counseled President Donald Trump in other areas, but in a shocking revelation which The New York Times and other news outlets reported late last year, Eastman sat in the Oval Office with Trump attempting to pressure the outgoing vice president to act to overturn a free and fair election.

Later, on January 6, Eastman, The Washington Post reported, would blame Pence for the violent attempted coup which included Trump supporters hunting for Pence inside the Capitol, a gallows and noose just outside, chanting repeatedly, “hang Mike Pence.”

What was essentially an attempted assassination of a sitting vice president came barely hours after Eastman – who to this day remains a Claremont Institute “scholar” – at the Jan. 6 spouted “conspiracy theories about voter fraud.”

Here is John Eastman, chairman of a Federalist Society practice group, at the pre-insurrection rally spouting conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He concludes: \u201cAnybody that is not willing to stand up and [vote to overturn the election] does not deserve to be in the office!\u201dpic.twitter.com/auD2vXSjNE

— Mark Joseph Stern ***FAIR COLAs FOR SLATE*** (@Mark Joseph Stern ***FAIR COLAs FOR SLATE***) 1610553789

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/trump-attorney-eastman-went-directly-to-arizonas-house-speaker-with-his-insurrectionist-scheme-report/

John C. Eastman — a far-right attorney, Donald Trump ally, MAGA Republican and prominent figure in the Claremont Institute — has horrified constitutionalists because of his authoritarian plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. And one of the Republicans he reached out to directly, according to the Arizona Republic, was Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers.

Referencing reporting in the Arizona Republic, Talking Points Memo's Cristina Cabrera notes that on January 4, 2021, Eastman contacted Bowers directly "to pitch a legal theory on how Arizona's electors ought to be tossed away before Congress" certified "the electoral votes on January 6."

Arizona was one of the five states that went for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election but flipped to now-President Joe Biden in 2020; the others were Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump falsely claimed that he was the real winner in Arizona but was deprived of a victory because of widespread voter fraud, but official bipartisan recounts confirmed that Biden, in fact, won the state.

Regardless, Trump lawyer Eastman was more than happy to promote Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud. And because of Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other Trump lawyers, the United States came dangerously close to a constitutional crisis during the late 2020/early 2021 lame duck period. The violent insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 was unprecedented in U.S. history.

Cabrera notes, "Eastman has claimed he was only…. offering hypotheticals and had no intention of overturning the election. But January 4, the day he spoke to Bowers, was also the day he presented his election-stealing scheme to (Vice President Mike) Pence. Both reported examples show Eastman pressing Republicans to subvert the election, not simply offering disinterested legal advice."

The fact that Eastman has been so prominent in the Claremont Institute is important. Founded in 1979, the right-wing think tank has been around for 42 years — and in the past, it favored a more traditional brand of conservation. Claremont's founder, the late Harry V. Jaffa, was a speechwriter for Sen. Barry Goldwater during his 1964 presidential campaign. But Claremont has taken an increasingly dark and authoritarian turn in recent years, fully embracing Trump's MAGA movement and pushing far-right conspiracy theories. In a notorious essay for the American Mind published on March 24 and headlined "Conservatism Is No Longer Enough," Glenn Ellmers (a Claremont senior fellow) argued that most people living in the U.S. are no longer Americans in the true sense. Ellmers' essay was right out of the Viktor Orbán/Vladimir Putin/Marine LePen school of hyper-nationalist far-right authoritarianism.

Eastman, like Ellmers, has championed the MAGA movement vigorously. And more traditional conservatives and libertarians such as those at The Bulwark have been appalled by his scheme, outlined in a two-page memo, for overturning the 2020 election results.

According to Cabrera, "Eastman's reported conversation with Bowers fell on the same day as the attorney's Oval Office meeting with Pence, during which Eastman laid out his now-infamous memo explaining how the vice president could hijack Congress' certification process to keep Trump in power. Eastman proposed that Pence throw out electors from the swing states Biden had won, including Arizona, and let the GOP-controlled state legislatures or U.S. House Republicans choose new electors…. The Arizona Republic's new report on Eastman apparently trying to personally lobby an individual state Republican leader reveals the extent to which the lawyer tried to make his cloak-and-dagger scheme, which was fully backed by Trump, a reality."

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/eastman-pitch-coup-plan-arizona-gop-leader

john Eastman, the conservative legal scholar who drew up a full scheme to have then-Vice President Mike Pence throw out certain states’ 2020 electoral votes to steal the election for Donald Trump, reportedly took his ideas straight to at least one Republican leader in a state Trump lost.

According to the Arizona Republic’s latest report in its multi-part series on Trumpworld’s efforts to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona, Eastman reached out to state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) personally on Jan. 4 to pitch a legal theory on how Arizona’s electors ought to be tossed away before Congress certifies the electoral votes on Jan. 6.

Eastman has claimed he was only ever offering hypotheticals and had no intention of overturning the election. But Jan. 4 — the day he spoke to Bowers — was also the day he presented his election-stealing scheme to Pence.

Both reported examples show Eastman pressing Republicans to subvert the election, not simply offering disinterested legal advice.

bowers reportedly asked Eastman during their talk, “Has this ever been done before?”

The lawyer said no, but told Bowers he ought to do it anyway and let Trump’s legal team deal with whatever litigation might arise from the gambit, the Arizona Republic reported.

But the GOP leader reportedly wasn’t sold.

“It’s never been done in the history of the country, and I’m going to do that in Arizona?” he asked, according to the Arizona Republic. “No.”

Eastman’s reported conversation with Bowers fell on the same day as the attorney’s Oval Office meeting with Pence, during which Eastman laid out his now-infamous memo explaining how the vice president could hijack Congress’ certification process to keep Trump in power. Eastman proposed that Pence throw out electors from the swing states Biden had won, including Arizona, and let the GOP-controlled state legislatures or U.S. House Republicans choose new electors.

Since details about Eastman’s blueprint for his proposed coup came out this September, the lawyer has publicly insisted that he never thought that the memo’s legal theories carried any weight and that it was only intended to detail “available scenarios that had been floated.”

But Eastman’s denials utterly collapsed in late October, when the lawyer told an undercover progressive activist that he absolutely believed his reasoning in the memo was solid.

The Arizona Republic’s new report on Eastman apparently trying to personally lobby an individual state Republican leader reveals the extent to which the lawyer tried to make his cloak-and-dagger scheme, which was fully backed by Trump, a reality.

---

scott perry frdm cock --> bossert to trump

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11 21 an

On January 2, Trump lawyer John Eastman called into Steve Bannon's War Room podcast to explain how to steal the election. Eastman told Bannon that Vice President Mike Pence could still overturn Biden's victory. The interview was part of an extremely public campaign by Trump and his closest allies to lobby Pence to steal the election during the certification ceremony.

One of Eastman's crackpot theories was that the vice president has the unilateral power to accept or reject electoral votes at his whim, or failing that, to somehow "send the election back" to Republican-controlled swing state legislatures that would disregard the will of their people and replace Biden's electors with Trump's.

Eastman was Trump's master of self-serving constitutional bafflegab. His job was to spin elaborate pseudo-legal theories to justify Trump's assault on democracy. It was Eastman who wrote the notorious memos outlining his fanciful legal arguments for why the vice president has the power to unilaterally reelect himself. Eastman also co-wrote a blueprint for how Trump could use the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power after a disputed election. Eastman even spoke at Trump's rally on the Ellipse, making wild allegations of election fraud before Trump set the mob on the Capitol.

To understand January 6, you have to think in terms of an inside game and an outside game. The inside game was to steal the election procedurally. The outside game was to gather a mob to terrorize officials into going along with it. Eastman was a conceptual architect of both the paper coup attempt and of the plan for the political repression that Trumpists expected to follow in the wake of the theft.

READ:A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it

It all comes back to the Big Lie of massive Democratic voter fraud in the swing states. Trump used the fantasy of a stolen election to gather his supporters in Washington for a "wild protest" on January 6, whip them into a rage and set them on the Capitol. Eastman used the same lie to justify his schemes to overturn the election procedurally.

In his various memos and public appearances, Eastman presented several paths to overrule the will of the people, but his ultimate justification was always the same: Democratic "fraud" in the swing states invalidated their certified slates of Biden electors.

Therefore, he maintained, Mike Pence was entitled to unilaterally cast aside the electoral votes and count alternate slates of fake electors in their place or discard the votes from those states altogether, denying either candidate the necessary 270 votes and throwing the election to the state delegations in the House.

As Eastman wrote in his second memo, Trump would prevail, "if the Republicans in the State Delegations stand firm." At the time, the GOP caucus was deeply divided over whether to back Trump's paper coup, and Pence was signalling he was not willing to play his assigned role.

READ:'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system

Hence the need for extra muscle on the outside.

This fits with what another key conspirator has said about his reason for gathering a mob on January 6. "We […] schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting," said Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, regarding his motives. He wanted to "change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside."

After an extended rant about the cowardice of Mike Pence, the last order Trump gave the mob before sending them down Pennsylvania Avenue was that they must give "boldness" to "weak Republicans."

Trump's command echoed Eastman's language in the longer of the two memos in which he described his own scheme as "BOLD, certainly."

Read:'Conspiracy nuts': DeSantis is in the hot seat after his aide gets caught pushing anti-Semitic theory

The label "coup" conjures up images of a military takeover, but a procedural coup under the threat of violence is still a coup.

Denialists try to mislead by pointing to the insurgents' relatively light weaponry and saying: "You don't think they meant to overthrow the US government with that, do you?" But the plan was never to physically seize control of the government. Insurgents just had to bully Pence and House Republicans into reversing the election for Trump.

Trump's advisors were well aware that reversing a free and fair election would provoke national outrage and widespread protests. Eastman's blueprint for leveraging the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power would work as well or better after a procedural coup as it would after an uncertain Election Night (the scenario nominally entertained in the report). A stolen election would putBiden supporters in the streets where the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers would be waiting for them, prepared to start or escalate violence wherever they could. This kind of unrest was exactly what Eastman warned local officials to be prepared to suppress.[see war game bs?]

We eagerly await what Bannon and Eastman will tell the January 6 committee, but what they've already said is utterly damning.

READ:Ocasio-Cortez gives an impassioned speech blasting Kevin McCarthy after Gosar's 'incitement of violence'

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House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has just issued more subpoenas for very close Trump associates, among them longtime Trump advisor Jason Miller, and former Trump National Security Advisor, QAnon conspiracist Michael Flynn.

Also on the list are the author of the memo detailing how Vice President Mike Pence could allegedly overturn the election, anti-LGBTQ group chairman John Eastman. Decades-long Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik is also among those subpoenaed.

One name many do not know is Angela McCallum, who served as aNational Republican Senatorial Committee War Room Lead,and as a National Executive Assistant, for Donald J. Trump for President.

Lastly, Bill Stepien, Trump 2020 campaign manager.

Axios' Andrew Solender posts the letter to Stepien.

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no lnx

'Barely concealed bloodlust': Claremont Institute laid out detailed plan for using cops to overturn Trump’s election loss

Travis Gettys and Raw Story November 08, 2021

The right-wing Claremont Institute published a report in mid-October 2020 that gamed out a scenario where Donald Trump would remain in office through an alliance between law enforcement and militant extremists.

The report was prepared by attorney John Eastman, who authored a memo laying out another strategy for keeping Trump in office, and former Trump deputy national security advisor K.T. McFarland, as well as Kevin Roberts, then-executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, alt-right figure Jeff Giesea and right-wing blogger Charles Haywood, reported The Bulwark.

"Despite the authors' pretensions to scholarship and rigor — 'for a simulation to be valuable, the other side gets a vote and actions must be based in realism' — the final document is a frenzied and paranoid piece of work, revealing of the anxieties and aspirations of the authoritarian right," writes columnist Christian Vanderbrouk. "Practically, the report is an instruction manual for how Trump partisans at all levels of government — aided by citizen 'posses' of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — could, quite literally, round up opposition activists, kill their leaders, and install Donald Trump for a second term in office."

Most of the predictions in the report, titled "79 Days to Inauguration," did not come to fruition, such as the authors' belief that some states' voting results would be fatally tainted by cyber attacks and suspicious fires, and left-wing mobs did not converge on Washington, D.C., to incite violence, and police did not execute antifa/Black Lives Matter leaders as part of a federal operation.

"A barely concealed bloodlust runs through the report," Vanderbrouk writes. "This isn't a serious wargame or a policy study so much as a bowdlerized retelling of The Turner Diaries."

The report was produced in response to the bipartisan Transition Integrity Project's (TIP) exercise on "Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition," which considered the prospect of Trump refusing to concede an election loss and made recommendations for avoiding a crisis -- which seems to be the opposite intent of the Claremont Institute's exercise.

"To the extent that the Claremont-TPPF report offers recommendations, they are mostly focused on how to emerge victorious from the chaos, including preparation 'for destructive urban unrest [with] potential targets includ[ing] ballot counting facilities, government buildings, especially state capitols and city halls, as well as television and radio studios,'" Vanderbrouk writes. "The Claremont task force seems either resigned to—or perhaps energized by—the view that 'prudent steps are likely to be spun as preparations for a military takeover or coup and may result in negative consequences either way.'"

"Either way. It's as if they're steering into the violence instead of trying to avoid it," he adds. "The message is clear:do whatever it takes to crush your opponents and all will be forgiven in the second Trump term."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/the-claremont-institute/

no lnx twt

How a little known right-wing think tank continues to add fuel to Trump's 'Big Lie'

Meaghan Ellis November 05, 2021

Former President Donald Trump may have had an overwhelming number of supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to "stop the Steal, but one conservative think tank is still helping to perpetuate the big lie.

According to Vice News, the Claremont Institute and its top-ranking members played a dominant role aiding Trump as he attempted to overturn the presidential election.

Per Vice:

"Claremont Institute leaders' actions leading up to, during, and after Jan. 6 are the culmination of five years of increasingly alarmist rhetoric and calls to action from the think tank, whose embrace of Trump and Trumpism have helped mainstream fringe views into the Republican Party ecosystem by positioning themselves as the vanguard in an existential "cold civil war" between true Americans and anti-American progressives."

One leader in particular was Trump loyalists and lawyer John Eastman. Not only did he attempt to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election but he also echoed many of Trump's biggest lies about the election being stolen.

Like many of the conspiracy theorists, Eastman claimed "dead people voted" and Dominion Voting Systems' "'machines contributed to that fraud' by 'unloading the ballots from the secret folder,'" Vice reports.

“All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1 o'clock he let the legislators of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not," Eastman claimed. “We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can't get the answer to this question. This is bigger than President Trump. It is the very essence of our republican form of government and it has to be done. And anybody that is not willing to stand up and do it does not deserve to be in the office."

As proof of the think tank leaders' actions, the publication also pointed to tweets and messages that made their stance quite clear. Vice highlighted a tweet shared by Claremont Institute president emeritus and senior fellow Brian Kennedy's tweet just one day before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

"We have been on Capitol Hill all day. We are in a constitutional crisis and also in a revolutionary moment," Kennedy tweeted on Jan. 5. “We must embrace the spirit of the American Revolution to stop this communist revolution. #HoldTheLine."

Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams also echoed similar claims in a YouTube video saying, "The mission of the Claremont Institute is to save Western civilization."

Welcome to the Claremont Institute

www.youtube.com

Political analysts have weighed in to explain just how disturbing the Claremont Institute's actions are as there are concerns about similar incidents occurring in the future.

"Laura K. Field, a political theorist at American University, recently explained why it is so disturbing.

"It's incredibly concerning. They're desperate to take on the role of leading the charge in terms of providing arguments for the anti-democratic populism of Trump, Field explained. "They really want to do everything they can to keep Republicans in power, even if it means manipulating through bad-faith measures the levers of power."

There are also concerns about the future because ongoing attacks leveled at America's voting systems "could lead to more distrust and division and skepticism about various institutions in the medium-to-long run."

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no lnx

Scathing new report sheds light on the most shocking aspect of John Eastman's involvement in the Capitol riots

Meaghan Ellis October 30, 2021

New damning developments pertaining to the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol have come to light. According to Washington Post, the latest investigative update involves former President Donald Trump's lawyer John Eastman.

The report, written by Washington Post reporters Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany, Jon Swaine, and Emma Brown, explains how Eastman attempted to build a case to persuade former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election. It has been revealed that "even as rioters overran the Capitol and a recalcitrant Pence was forced into hiding, Eastman emailed a Pence aide to actually blame Pence for the scene."

At one point, Pence's aide Greg Jacob also became embroiled in a heated exchange with Eastman telling him that "his 'bullshit legal advice was why Pence's team was 'under siege.' An accusation Eastman replied to with a suggestion pushing the blame off on Pence.

:{:{}:

"The 'siege' is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this [election challenge] to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened," Eastman replied.

The reporters also highlighted more damning details that occurred after U.S. Capitol Police managed to clear the breached federal building so lawmakers could reconvene.

Pence allowed other lawmakers to speak before they returned to counting the votes, and said he wasn't counting the time from his speech or the other lawmakers against the time allotted in the Electoral Count Act.

:{:{}:

Eastman said that this prompted him to email Jacob to say that Pence should not certify the election because he had already violated the Electoral College Act, which Pence had cited as a reason that he could not send the electors back to the states.

"My point was they had already violated the electoral count act by allowing debate to extend past the allotted two hours, and by not reconvening 'immediately' in joint session after the vote in the objection," Eastman told The Post. "It seemed that had already set the precedent that it was not an impediment."

Based on Eastman's actions and his response to Pence's aide, it appears he was well aware of how they could possibly leverage the angry mob of rioters that stormed the Capitol.

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nat rev friday tried distance/redemption then video undercover woman turned up so accent he said wd have worked but vp squish establishment comfy

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/john-eastman-2655408211/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/john-eastman-2655317174/

John C. Eastman — the far-right attorney, Donald Trump ally and Claremont Institute extremist who devised a memo outlining a game plan for preventing now-President Joe Biden's Electoral College certification by Congress on January 6 — is being slammed as dangerously authoritarian by his critics, while Eastman and his Claremont colleagues see him as a victim of cancel culture. But Niskanen Center senior fellow Laura K. Field, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on October 18, lays out some reasons why Eastman's cancel culture claims are nonsense.

Field explains, "You may know the Claremont Institute as the intellectual home of John Eastman, the lawyer behind the infamous six-point memo, who helped President Donald Trump concoct his plan for rejecting the Electoral College results on January 6…. In recent weeks, the Institute has been entangled in a dispute with the American Political Science Association. APSA is the country's premier professional association for political scientists, and the dispute with Claremont concerned Eastman's participation in APSA's annual conference. Spoiler alert: The conference is over, Eastman did not participate, and Claremont is claiming it has been censored — and even affirmatively defending Eastman and naming him in its latest fundraising efforts."

Eastman's claim that widespread voter fraud robbed Trump of a victory in the 2020 presidential election is a lie. Biden enjoyed a decisive victory, defeating Trump by more than 7 million in the United States' popular vote and winning 306 electoral votes. And numerous vote recounts in the states that Biden won, from Pennsylvania to Arizona, have made it abundantly clear that Biden legitimately won both the popular vote and the electoral vote — period.

Field argues that if the American Political Science Association and others shun Eastman, their criticisms of him are well-founded.

"Most members of the American Political Science Association are not fools, and they see the clear and immediate threat that Eastman's actions posed to American democracy," Field notes. "And so, when some APSA members noticed that the Claremont Institute was still maintaining ties to Eastman and that Claremont would be featuring Eastman on two panels at APSA's big annual meeting, they started pushing back."

Field continues, "They tweeted. They posted on Facebook and on blogs. They debated the appropriate course of action. People noticed that Claremont has apparently been using its involvement at APSA as a fundraising tool. In the week leading up to APSA's meeting this year, a few hundred individuals signed an open letter requesting that Eastman and Claremont be ousted from the conference. It seemed all but certain that there would be in-person protests of the Claremont panels at APSA."

But Field goes on to offer a "full disclosure," noting that the open letter "cited my July essay for The Bulwark about Claremont."

"While I was glad to see the letter circulating, I did not sign it," Field writes. "I am uncomfortable with the idea of any kind of ideological test for participants in political science conferences."

The Bulwark article that Field is referring to, published on July 13 and covered by AlterNet that day, was a scathing critique of theClaremont Institute — a right-wing think tank founded in 1979 by students of the late Harry V. Jaffa, who was a speechwriter for conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. Field's article, headlined "What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?", had no problem with Goldwater conservatism; The Bulwark, for all its Trump-bashing, is still a right-wing website. But Field slammed Claremont for rejecting traditional conservatism and taking a toxic plunge into Trumpism, conspiracy theories and election denial. As Field and others at The Bulwark see it, Claremont has degenerated into an abyss of authoritarian thinking.

But while Field didn't sign the open letter, she remains vehemently critical of what Claremont has became.

"These days, though, the Claremont Review is not what it once was, and Claremont's web publication, the American Mind, routinely publishes pieces that damage the Institute's reputation for intellectual integrity," Field writes. "And so, their involvement in APSA is one of the few external legitimating elements remaining. Once that is lost, so goes much of the intellectual patina that is the Claremont trademark."

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1021 an

legal expert George Conway is blasting the Claremont Institute for defending John Eastman (photo, with Giuliani on Jan. 6), the man who wrote the now-infamous "Eastman Memo" which many see as instructions to then-Vice President Mike Pence on how to overturn the 2020 presidential election on January 6.

"Claremont's statement that Eastman did not seek to have Vice President Pence unilaterally determine the validity of electoral votes and overturn the election is a bald-faced, disgraceful lie," says Conway, who successfully argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and won a unanimous decision, and had been under consideration to be Donald Trump's solicitor general or an assistant attorney general.

Conway was referring to a statement from the Claremont Institute, the pro-Trump conservative think tank where Eastman is employed as a senior fellow. Claremont has embraced right wing extremists, granting fellowships to Fox News' Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, CRT conspiracist Christopher Rufo, and even Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec.

The Washington Post Monday accused Claremont of trying to "whitewash" Eastman's "road map for overturning Trump's loss."

Eastman, who happens to be the chairman of the nearly-defunct anti-LGBTQ group National Organization For Marriage (NOM) and supported Uganda's efforts to jail LGBTQ people for life, was forced to "retire" as a law professor after blowback from speaking at Trump's pre-insurrection rally, ginning up the troops, and falsely claiming Trump had won the election.

In its statement defending Eastman today, Claremont decried "a recent combined disinformation, de-platforming, and ostracism campaign," also known as holding Eastman accountable by using his own words.

Here's Conway's tweet...

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trms blog

oct 6, 2021, 5:40 AM PDT

By Steve Benen

Since John Eastman's notorious anti-election memo came to the fore, the Republican lawyer has received considerable attention, but he's showing no signs of contrition. In fact, Eastman told The New York Times a few days ago that he's following through on his earlier antics.

"There are lots of allegations out there that didn't get their day in court and lots of people that believe them and wish they got their day in court," the GOP attorney said, "and I am working very diligently with several teams — statistical teams, election specialists teams, all sorts of teams — to try and identify the various claims and determine whether they have merit or there is reasonable explanation for them."

But while Eastman and his many "teams" chase down assorted conspiracy theories, some of the lawyer's critics are seeking a bar investigation into his controversial efforts. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday:

A group of prominent lawyers, including former governors and judges, urged the California bar on Monday to launch an investigation into John C. Eastman's role in advising President Trump on how he could overturn his election defeat, including by having his vice president refuse to count the electoral votes in seven states won by President Biden.

"We write to request that the State Bar investigate serious evidence of professional misconduct by Professor John C. Eastman in connection with his representation of former President Donald J. Trump in efforts to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election," the group wrote.

The signatories added, "The available evidence supports a strong case that ... Mr. Eastman violated his ethical obligations as an attorney by filing frivolous claims, making false statements, and engaging in deceptive conduct.... On January 6, 2021, Mr. Eastman continued this pattern of misconduct by giving the crowd at the 'Stop the Steal' rally on the National Mall another version of his misleading advice and stating that, by rejecting it, Mr. Pence had proved himself undeserving of his office."

For those who may need a refresher, it was last summer when Eastman published a bizarre piece that argued that Vice President Kamala Harris was ineligible for national office because her parents are immigrants. Soon after, he began working with Donald Trump — the then-president saw him on Fox News and was impressed — and as part of that work, Eastman filed the brief last December on Trump's behalf that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 presidential election. (It was filled with factual errors — including an obvious one literally on the first page.)

Soon after, he authored what's become known as the Eastman Memo, which fleshed out a ridiculous six-step scenario in which then-Vice President Mike Pence, rather than honor the results of the election, would exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act and set aside the Electoral College votes of seven states. That would put Trump in the lead, but it would also leave both candidates short of a majority.

From there, under Eastman's reported plan, the election would shift to the U.S. House, where Republicans controlled enough state delegations to keep Trump in power, despite his defeat.

This was, in other words, an apparent document — written by a lawyer representing the then-president — that effectively outlined how Republicans could execute something resembling a coup. Eastman even pushed his vision on Jan. 6, speaking at the pro-Trump rally ahead of the insurrectionist riot.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-feedback-loop-generated-eastmans-presidential-coup-memo

no lnx vids

John Eastman’s coup memo was the result of the Fox-Trump feedback loop

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 10/04/21 1:59 PM EDT

The prominent conservative lawyer behind a memo explaining how to subvert the 2020 election for President Donald Trump reportedly first caught Trump’s attention while shilling on the president’s behalf during an interview on Fox News.

Trump’s obsession with Fox programming is well-documented. Throughout his presidency, he regularly tweeted in response to shows he was watching; staffed his administration and legal defense teams with Fox regulars; and shaped his decision-making around advice he received from its personalities, both in person and on the air. On issues as diverse as border wall contracting, pandemic response, and pardons, federal policy responded to what the president was seeing on the right-wing propaganda network.

John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who spoke to the pro-Trump mob in the hours before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, apparently put himself on Trump’s radar in similar fashion.

“Trump, who had never met Mr. Eastman, saw him on the Fox News talk show of the far-right commentator Mark Levin railing against the Russia investigation” in mid-2019, The New York Times reported Saturday. “Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting.”

Eastman remained in Trump’s orbit over the next year and a half, according to the Times, and, after Trump lost the 2020 election, the right-wing attorney created a plan by which Vice President Mike Pence and congressional Republicans could use bogus claims of voter fraud to keep Trump in power. Eastman’s six-step scheme to end American democracy, revealed last month by The Washington Post and CNN, was foiled largely because Pence was ultimately unwilling to go through with it.

“Mr. Eastman’s appeal to Mr. Trump,” the Times reported, “rested in large part on his expansive views of presidential power — and his willingness to tell Mr. Trump what he wanted to hear.”

That description matches Eastman’s performance during the Fox interview that initially captured Trump’s attention. That appearance, for the May 12, 2019, edition of Life, Liberty, and Levin, followed the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump and his supporters tried to spin that document as vindicating him. But it was actually incredibly damning, documenting, among other things, a variety of ways Trump had sought to obstruct the probe.

Over the course of his hour-long sitdown with Levin, who introduced him as a “brilliant” legal scholar, Eastman explained how the Constitution and federal law supported all of Trump’s most corrupt and bigoted impulses, while decrying Mueller’s team as biased political partisans whose probe was itself illegal and perhaps deliberately “set up to create a media frenzy.”

According to Eastman, it is impossible for a president to violate the law by interfering with a federal investigation, even if that investigation’s purpose was to review his activities or those of his associates. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” he claimed. Even if Trump had successfully fired Mueller himself it would be legal, according to Eastman, because “the entire executive branch is headed by one guy and the only constitutional check on that is through an impeachment power, not through statutes and not through regulations internal to the Department of Justice, because the president has the authority to change those whenever he wants.”

After Levin described one such incident mentioned in the report, when Trump allegedly ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, Eastman said that “directing McGahn to fire him is no different than him picking up the phone himself, and even that would not have been obstruction.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman went on to agree with Levin’s claim that the Mueller investigation was itself “fundamentally illegal” because “nobody in the administration itself [was] accused with any evidence of a crime,” which is required under the special counsel statute. In reality, Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and his first White House national security adviser were among the litany of presidential associates who were ultimately convicted or entered guilty pleas through the probe.

When Levin asked later in the program, “This is really a rejection by the Democrat Party and the media and the rest of them, a rejection of the 2016 election, isn't it?” Eastman replied, “I think so. They still can't believe that they lost that election and they're trying to rationalize that there must've been something nefarious in order to produce it.”

He went on to say that “this is really a challenge to the results of the last election, which means it is a challenge to the American people and the very notion that we govern ourselves,” and that the intent is to create a “tyranny of the majority.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman also expressed support for Trump on a variety of other legal issues. He rejected the notion that payments foreign countries make to Trump through his hotel are violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and decried federal judges who blocked versions of Trump’s Muslim travel ban as “part of a resistance movement to undo the results of the 2016 election.”

At the conclusion of the interview, Eastman said that nothing Trump has done rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment under the Constitution.

“I've been stunned at how scrupulous Trump and his team have been in staying within the legal lines that they had,” he said, contrasting to how President Barack Obama “blew through the lines on executive power and constitutional authority on numerous occasions."

Video file

Citation From the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman was able to turn an interview on a Sunday night Fox show into a position of real political power because the president himself had been glued to the set. And after Trump and his propagandists at Fox created a web of lies about a “rigged” election, he was there to concoct a legal pretext to keep Trump in office. The coup plot failed -- but it did result in deadly violence when a crowd incited by speeches from Trump, Eastman, and others stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in hopes of preventing the peaceful transition of power.

Since then, the situation has only grown more dire, as the Republican Party and right-wing disinformation apparatus have institutionalized Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, laying the groundwork to rig future elections in favor of the GOP, through Eastman’s strategy or another one. And Fox was at the root of it all.

Trump lawyer John Eastman touted his plan to overturn the 2020 election in interviews with right-wing media

09/21/21 1:25 PM EDT

Broadcast news shows ignore Trump coup memo

09/22/21 4:32 PM EDT

CNN’s Brian Stelter highlights failure of news broadcasts to cover the Trump coup memo

09/26/21 2:44 PM EDT

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no lnx newsweek

atorney Sidney Powell said the January 6 riot at the Capitol could have caused a delay which would have allowed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito time to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election victory—but that chance was lost when Nancy Pelosi reconvened Congress to complete the process.

Powell, an attorney who has filed numerous lawsuits in a failed bid to overturn former President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss, made the comments during an appearance on the conservative Stew Peters Show on Friday.

She said that as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol that day, her team was seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the certification of Biden's win.

"We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don't jive with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution," she said. "And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that."

She added: "Louie Gohmert was the plaintiff in our lawsuit, and we were suing the vice president to follow the 12th Amendment as opposed to the Electoral College Act."...

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trms says fired from---?

John Eastman Retires From Chapman University - Forbes https://www.forbes.com › michaeltnietzel › 2021/01/13

Jan 13, 2021 — John Eastman, a law professor at the Fowler School of Law at Chapman University who had drawn increasing scrutiny over his controversial ...

Law professor John Eastman spoke at rally before Capitol ...https://www.washingtonpost.com › nation › 2021/01/14

Jan 14, 2021 — John Eastman, a conservative lawyer and professor, retired from ... Eastman's allegations as “repugnant” but added he would not fire the ...

Controversial law professor John Eastman retires from ...https://www.ocregister.com › 2021/01/13 › controversi...

Jan 13, 2021 — Sinha said she would have preferred to see Eastman fired and stripped of any school-related retirement benefits.

Faculty call for firing of Chapman University law professor who ...https://abc7.com › chapman-university-professor-john-eas...

John Eastman stood alongside Rudy Giuliani at a "Stop the Steal" rally, where the crowd was urged to march to the Capitol building. More than ...

Jan 11, 2021

Chapman University Faces Pressure To Fire Professor John ...https://losangeles.cbslocal.com › 2021/01/11 › chapma...

Jan 11, 2021 — Chapman University professor John Eastman (left) stands alongside Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, at rally near ...

Chapman University professor spoke out before Capitol riothttps://www.latimes.com › california › story › chapman...

Jan 13, 2021 —Chapman University will not fire law professor who spoke at pro-Trump Capitol rally. Chapman University professor John Eastman stands next ...

FIRE calls on CU Boulder to restore visiting Professor John ...https://www.dailycamera.com › 2021/02/03 › fire-calls-...

Feb 3, 2021 — Eastman's comments drew condemnation from DiStefano and the campus community. University leaders canceled his classes, citing low enrollment, on ...

Eastman retires from Chapman as CU Boulder faculty seek his ...https://www.dailycamera.com › 2021/01/13 › eastman-r...

Jan 13, 2021 — John C. Eastman (University of Colorado Boulder / Courtesy photo) ... theories” and “repugnant,” but stating he would not fire Eastman.

John Eastman lays groundwork to sue CU Boulder for ...https://www.denverpost.com › 2021/04/29 › john-east...

Apr 29, 2021 — University leadership accused him of spreading “repugnant” and baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud — but stopped short of firing ...

CU Boulder won't fire John Eastman, conservative scholar ...https://www.denverpost.com › 2021/01/08 › john-east...

Jan 8, 2021 —CU Boulder won't fire conservative scholar who spread “repugnant” conspiracy theories at D.C. rally. John Eastman, CU's visiting scholar in ...

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Trump's bid for Supreme Court election intervention has yet to ... ›

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chapman kochademic, OC

the fed (not fedsoc, tho that too) and AmGreatness’ Julie Kelly, who Swift describes as a “nutty, bad-faith operator,” has called social distancing a left-wing plot to “get control” that is “far scarier than any virus.”

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Josh Hammer, the editor of Newsweek’s increasingly right-wing opinion section and co-author of a note defending the once-respectable news outlet’s racist “birther” smear [eastman] aimed at Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, was one of the fairly prominent Twitter users to share the article. Hammer has previously praised Trump’s attacks on institutions like legitimate news organizations, and shared articles making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

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signed open ltr support cei on 1st amend rico BS

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/birtherism-2-0-right-wing-lawyer-john-eastman-questions-kamala-harris-eligibility-for-vice-presidency/

Eastman, a well-connected right-wing lawyer and anti-LGBTQ activist, published a column on Newsweek Wednesday questioning whether Kamala Harris meets the constitutional requirement to be vice president. As Right Wing Watch reported in a 2016 profile, law professor Eastman has a long record of activism on behalf of right-wing causes.

In his Newsweek op-ed, Eastman argued that even though Harris was born in Oakland, California, and her parents entered in the U.S. legally, she might not qualify as a natural-born U.S. citizen if her parents were not permanent residents at the time of Harris’ birth. Eastman’s constitutional interpretation is outside mainstream legal thinking; questions about Harris’s eligibility have been rejected by nonpartisan fact-checking sites and prominent conservatives. The column generated a wave of backlash on social media from critics calling Eastman’s argument racist.

Newsweek published an editor’s note late last night rejecting claims that Eastman’s column was racist. Editors Josh Hammer and Nancy Cooper stated:

Some of our readers have reacted strongly to the op-ed we published by Dr. John Eastman, assuming it to be an attempt to ignite a racist conspiracy theory around Kamala Harris’ candidacy. Dr. Eastman was focusing on a long-standing, somewhat arcane legal debate about the precise meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment. His essay has no connection whatsoever to co-called “birther-ism,” the racist 2008 conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing then-candidate Barack Obama by claiming, baselessly, that he was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. We share our readers’ revulsion at those vile lies.

Eastman has been one of the most vocal advocates for eliminating the 14th Amendment’s protection of birthright citizenship. He has argued that it would not take a constitutional amendment, just a court decision or act of Congress to change what he believes to be an erroneous interpretation of the 14th Amendment. These ideas put him on the fringes of the right-wing legal movement.

Citizenship and immigration are not the only issues on which Eastman pushes hard-right positions.

Eastman chairs the board of the anti-LGBTQ-equality National Organization for Marriage and has called homosexuality an indicator of “barbarism.” He described the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence ruling, which overturned state laws criminalizing consensual gay sex, as a “despotic” decision. He attacked the 2015 marriage equality ruling as “illegitimate” and encouraged state officials to resist it. Eastman even supported Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Act, which would impose life imprisonment in some cases. He has aligned himself with anti-equality and anti-choice efforts globally, speaking at the World Congress of Families summit in 2019.

At a Senate hearing convened by Sen. Ted Cruz after the marriage equality ruling in 2015, Eastman argued that a simple majority of states should be allowed to override “egregiously wrong” Supreme Court decisions. He urged Congress to advance some of his proposals to restrict the court before citizens’ patience “runs out” and they assert the right expressed in the Declaration of Independence to abolish the government that is oppressing them.

Eastman’s support for the Supreme Court’s infamous 1905 Lochner decision—which ushered in an era in which the court rejected economic and labor regulations—puts him in opposition to the late Antonin Scalia, who opposed the Lochner ruling.

Eastman has also taken a fringe position—one taken by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Eastman clerked—that the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion does not apply to the states, and has argued that a state taxing people to support an official church, as some states did early in the nation’s history, was not all that coercive.

Harris and Eastman do have something in common. Both were candidates in the 2010 election for attorney general in California. Harris won, while Eastman was defeated in the Republican primary.

Tags: John Eastman Birthers birthright citizenship Election 2020

CV 100pp on federalism 2019 testimony

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/**2019**1017/110084/HHRG-116-JU10-Bio-EastmanJ-20191017.pdf

CHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS:

“‘Religiously Scrupulous’: Freedom of Conscience at the Founding,” Ave Maria L. R. (forthcoming, Vol. 17)

“The Significance of ‘Domicile’ in Wong Kim Ark,” 22 Chap. L. Rev. 301 (Spring 2019), at

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1442&context=chapman-law-review

“Congress Has Both Textual and Inherent Authority to Regulate Immigration, and a Good Thing That It Does,” Cato

Unbound: A Journal of Debate (Sept. 2018), available at https://www.cato-unbound.org/2018/09/26/johneastman/congress-has-both-textual-inherent-authority-regulate-immigration-good#disqus_thread

“The Religious Wars in Twenty-First-Century America,” 21 NYU J. of Markets & Morality 23 (2018)

“Deference Meets Delegation: Which is the Most Dangerous Branch?,” transcript of panel debate, 2015 Federalist

Society Lawyers Convention, with C. Boyden Gray, David Rivkin, Neal Katyal, moderated by Judge Brett

Kavanaugh, 43 Dayton L. Rev. 31 (2018)

“Live by the Executive Pen, Die by the Executive Pen?”, 65 Drake L. Rev. 997 (2017)

“The President’s Pen and the Bureaucrat’s Fiefdom,” 40 Harv. J. L. Pub. Policy 639 (2017)

“The Power to Control Immigration is a Core Aspect of Sovereignty,” 40 Harv. J. L. Pub. Policy 9 (2017)

“No Free Lunch, But Dinner and a Movie (and Contraceptives for Dessert)?” 10 NYU J. L. & Liberty 282 (2016)

...

OPINION COLUMNS:

“Alito’s Strategic Vote Signals Reining In of ‘Law by Regulation,’”RealClearPolitics(June 25, 2019), at

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/25/alitos_strategic_vote_signals_reining_in_of_law_by_regulati

on.html

“The Supreme Court, citizenship, and the census – What’s really at stake,” FoxNews (June 22, 2019), at

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-eastman-supreme-court-citizenship-census-questionsovereignty?fbclid=IwAR131bdW8X3xrZn_XRx_dzeySJyVNZFsu6k7-nMXMtdAT7SybqPdCSU2SDQ

“Trump can and should cite emergencies act,” Newsday (Feb. 10, 2019), at

https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/southern-border-wall-emergency-trump-1.27065437

“Trump Can Build a Wall—and Should!”,American Greatness (Jan. 9, 2019), at

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/09/trump-can-build-the-wall-and-should/

“The Court Will Consider Justice Scalia’s Invitation, Posthumously,” Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals

(Dec. 13, 2018), at https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-court-will-consider-justice-scalias-invitationposthumously/

“Federalism and Sanctuary Cities: The New Nullification Crisis,” 60 Orange County Lawyer 37 (Nov. 2018), at

http://www.ocbar.org/All-News/News-View/ArticleId/2475/November-2018-Cover-Story-Federalism-andSanctuary-Cities-The-New-Nullification-Crisis

“Double Standards Galore in the Attorney General Fracas,” American Greatness (Nov. 17, 2018), at

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/17/double-standards-galore-in-the-attorney-general-fracas/

“Dred Scott? Seriously?” American Greatness (July 26, 2018), at https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/26/dred-scottseriously/

“Repudiating the judicial coup d’etat,” Scotusblog (June 27, 2018), at

http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/06/symposium-repudiating-the-judicial-coup-detat/

“The President's Power to Keep Congress at Work,” Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals (June 4 2018), at

https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-presidents-power-to-keep-congress-at-work/

“The Supreme Court vs. The Wild, Wild, West,” Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals (March 6, 2018), at

https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-supreme-court-vs-the-wild-wild-west/

“With amnesty, how many times will Lindsey Graham play the fool?”The Hill (Jan. 25, 2018), at

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/370772-with-amnesty-how-many-times-will-lindsey-graham-play-the-fool

“Supreme Court should reverse the 9th Circuit's flawed deference to administrative state,” Washington Examiner

(Jan. 15, 2018), at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/supreme-court-should-reverse-the-9th-circuits-flaweddeference-to-administrative-state

“The CFPB and the Swamp,” Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals (Dec. 1, 2017), reprinted as “The SelfPerpetuating Swamp,” CRB Digital, at https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-self-perpetuating-swamp/.

“Supreme Court To Decide Whether Faith Is Between You And God, Or You And Government,” The Federalist (Dec.

2017), at http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/04/supreme-court-decide-whether-faith-god-government/

“Did Mueller Misfire?” Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals (Nov. 1, 2017), reprinted as “Misdirection by

Indictment?” at http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/misdirection-by-indictment/

“Napolitano’s Chutzpa,” Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals...

820

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/newsweek-should-disavow-racist-insinuation-that-kamala-harris-is-not-a-citizen/

no lnx pix twt prof of law chapman u, sr fellow claremont inst

newsweek should disavow racist insinuation that Kamala Harris is not a citizen

Written by Jim Naureckas / FAIR August 14, 2020

Less than 24 hours after Kamala Harris became the first person of color to be chosen as a vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket, Newsweek ran an op-ed (8/13/20) insinuating that she was not a citizen and therefore ineligible to run.

The piece, by former Clarence Thomas law clerk John Eastman, disregarded almost two centuries of Supreme Court jurisprudence to pretend that there is an actual debate over the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which appears in the 14th Amendment passage that grants automatic citizenship to people born here:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Newsweek: Some Questions for Kamala Harris About Eligibility

Newsweek (8/12/20) gives a platform to a fringe legal theory that holds Kamala Harris is not actually a US citizen because her parents were immigrants.

Long before the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, however, the Supreme Court made it clear that children born to residents of the United States were citizens. In Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor’s Snug Harbor, an 1830 case, the Court declared:

Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto are subjects by birth.

Generations later, in the 1898 ruling United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court spelled out its understanding of what the 14th Amendment means for citizenship, listing all the categories of people who were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US:

The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes.

(Indigenous Americans were recognized as citizens by Congress in 1924, removing one of the very few exceptions to the birthright citizenship rule.)

Most of a century later, in Plyler v. Doe (1983) the Court reaffirmed that “jurisdiction” is to be understood in “predominantly geographic sense.” The ruling held that “no plausible distinction with respect to 14th Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

In 2018, when President Donald Trump threatened to issue an executive order that he claimed would strip US citizenship from the children of unauthorized immigrants, the Congressional Research Service (11/1/18) summed up the legal situation:

At least since the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the prevailing view has been that all persons born in the United States are constitutionally guaranteed citizenship at birth unless their parents are foreign diplomats, members of occupying foreign forces, or members of Indian tribes…. Because none of these exceptions permits the denial of birthright citizenship based on the alienage of parents who are not diplomats, the case is most often interpreted as barring the federal government from accomplishing such denial through any means other than a constitutional amendment.

Newsweek: Eastman's Newsweek Column Has Nothing to Do With Racist Birtherism

Contrary to Newsweek‘s editors’ note (8/13/20). the column it ran is entirely in the spirit of racist birtherism.

Are there lawyers who believe that the Supreme Court could and should overturn the 122-year-old precedent of Wong Kim Ark and find some new ground for declaring certain US residents not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States? Yes, and they are generally regarded as fringe theorists, motivated by a desire to denaturalize millions of US citizens, overwhelmingly people of color, who are every day recognized as full-fledged Americans for purposes of paying taxes, serving on juries, registering to vote—and running for office. That Newsweek chooses to give a platform to this xenophobic legal quackery is dismaying.

Newsweek‘s global editor in chief Nancy Cooper and opinion editor Josh Hammer published an editors’ note (8/13/20) hours after Eastman’s op-ed appeared, saying that “some of our readers have reacted strongly to the op-ed we published by Dr. John Eastman, assuming it to be an attempt to ignite a racist conspiracy theory around Kamala Harris’ candidacy.” The editors assert:

His essay has no connection whatsoever to so-called “birther-ism,” the racist 2008 conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing then-candidate Barack Obama by claiming, baselessly, that he was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. We share our readers’ revulsion at those vile lies.

Eastman’s column, they claim, “is not an attempt to deny facts or to make false claims. No one is questioning Harris’ place of birth or the legitimacy of an obviously valid birth certificate.” But it is an effort, based on the most far-fetched legal speculation, to assert that Harris is literally not an American because her parents were immigrants. It is the exact same impulse that prompted hatemongers like Donald Trump to question Barack Obama’s right to run for office, motivated by the identical racist ugliness.

ACTION ALERT: Please contact Newsweek‘s editors and demand that they retract the op-ed insinuating that Kamala Harris (like millions of other Americans) is not a US citizen.

CONTACT: You can contact Newsweek here or via Twitter: @Newsweek.

John Eastman

Constitutional Law Professor/Appellate Attorney

Orange County, California Area 500+ connections

Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law

University of Chicago Law School

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Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law

Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and Former Dean

Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law

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Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence

1999 – Present 21 years

The Center for constitutional Jurisprudence was founded by Dr. Eastman in 1999 as the public interest law arm of the Claremont Institute. Its mission is to restore, through strategic litigation, the principles of the American founding to our nation's jurisprudence. The Center represents clients and appears as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States and the lower federal and state courts in matters of constitutional significance, defending the core structural provisions of...

Candidate for Attorney General

Jan 2010 – Jun 2010 6 months

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Kirkland & Ellis

1997 – 19992 years

United States Supreme Court

Law Clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas

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University of Chicago Law School

Doctor of Law (JD)

1992 – 1995

Activities and Societies: Federalist Society, Edmund Burke Society, Law Review

Claremont Graduate UniversityClaremont Graduate University

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1982 – 1993

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The University of DallasThe University of Dallas

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1978 – 1982

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1977 – 1978

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1974 – 1977

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California ProLife Council

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Everything you need to know about Hickenlooper v. Kerr, the Guarantee Clause case before the Supreme Court

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will consider a petition for a writ of certiorari in Hickenlooper v. Kerr. Colorado legislators challenged an enacted ballot initiative that prohibited legislative tax increases from taking effect without a popular vote, arguing that it violated the Guarantee Clause. A federal district court, and the Tenth Circuit, agreed that the legislators had standing and that the Guarantee Clause claim was justiciable.

I started tracking this matter over a year ago. I provide the background in these links; below that, I'll discuss the briefs in the case that the Court will consider.

Tenth Circuit considers justiciability of Guarantee Clause today (Sept. 23, 2013)
More thoughts on the Guarantee Clause from Michael Ramsey (Oct. 10, 2013)
BREAKING: Tenth Circuit finds Guarantee Clause claim justiciable (Mar. 7, 2014)
Kerr v. Hickenlooper: Exploring the Tenth Circuit's Dubious Legal Reasoning, JURIST (Mar. 31, 2014)
Colorado files petition for rehearing en banc in Guarantee Clause case (Apr. 4, 2014)
BREAKING: Over four dissents, 10th Circuit denies en banc hearing in Guarantee Clause case (July 22, 2014)

Several amici were filed in the case, available at SCOTUSBlog. Of note (and these are very brief summaries of the major arguments):

The Colorado Union of Taxpayers Foundation, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, and 22 Colorado state legislators filed a brief in support of the petitioner. They focused primarily on the fact that respondents' injury was abstract, because legislators never enacted a tax increase for the people to vote upon--instead, they simply alleged a dilution of legislative power. That cannot comport with existing standing doctrine. Only if the Colorado legislature enacted a tax increase, then saw the people reject it, would standing exist.
The National Federation of Independent Business, along with several policy institutes, filed a brief in support of the petitioner. They emphasized the breadth of the impact of a finding that such a case is justiciable, because the decision invites judicial invalidation of direct democracy in a number of states on matters ranging from marijuana legalization to charter schools. They also noted that in the partisan gerrymandering context (Vieth v. Jublier), the Supreme Court has essentially required an articulation of judicially-manageable standards before the case could proceed. Here, the district court insisted (in a rather bizarre fashion) on holding a trial to determine what the Guarantee Clause demands.
The Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence (with John Eastman) filed a brief in support of the petitioner. It focused upon the inability of the Tenth Circuit to distinguish existing precedent finding the Guarantee Clause usually non-justiciable. Regardless, the case presents a good vehicle for clarifying the language in cases like New York v. United States (1992) suggesting that the Guarantee Clause may be justiciable, and articulating that the standards for justiciability are not met in this case.
Texas joined by five other states filed a brief joined in support of the petitioner. They argue that the text of the Guarantee Clause protects not the state legislature, but the people, and the States. They also cite other provisions like line-item vetos and supermajority voting requirements that may be called into question if this case is found justiciable.
The Cato Institute (with Ilya Shapiro)and several other policy institutes filed a brief in support of the petitioner. It asked the Court to avoid addressing the issue of whether the Guarantee Clause is per senon-justiciable and instead emphasized that Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights met the standard of a "Republican Form of Government," drawing heavily from source material at the founding.

The Supreme Court will consider the case tomorrow--and we'll eagerly await their decision as to whether to hear this case.

---

self publish = vulnerability?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Eastman-3

no lnx

Publications (59)

Department of Homeland Security v. University of California onDACA

Chapter

Jan 2021

John C. Eastman

President Barack Obama issued an executive order creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shielded many residents from deportation; President Donald Trump removed this executive order, canceling these protections. Did this action violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) which details how executive agencies mus...

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The Significance of "Domicile" in Wong Kim Ark

Article

Jan 2019

John C. Eastman

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The Power to Control Immigration is a Core Aspect of Sovereignty

Article

Jan 2017

John C. Eastman

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The President’s Pen and the Bureaucrat’s Fiefdom

Article

Jan 2017

John C. Eastman

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Live by the Executive Pen, Die by the Executive Pen?

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2017

John C. Eastman

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No Free Lunch, but Dinner and a Movie (And Contraceptives for Dessert)?

Article

Jan 2016

John C. Eastman

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Cheating Marriage: A Tragedy in Three Acts

Article

Jan 2015

John C. Eastman

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From "Plyler" to "Arizona": Have the Courts Forgotten About "Corfield v Coryell"?

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2013

John C. Eastman

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Papers, Please: Does the Constitution Permit the States a Role In Immigration Enforcement?

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2012

John C. Eastman

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Hidden Gems in the Historical 2011-2012 Term, and Beyond

Article

Jan 2012

John C. Eastman

et al

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Will Mrs. Bond Topple Missouri v. Holland?

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2011

John C. Eastman

Carol Anne Bond assaulted her former best friend with some chemicals she took from her workplace when she discovered the former friend was carrying her husband's baby. She was prosecuted not by the local district attorney for the simple assault, but by the U.S. Attorney for violating the federal statute that implements the international treaty agai...

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Debate on Birthright Citizenship

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2011

John C. Eastman

Ediberto Román

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Reflections on Justice Thomas's Twenty Years on the Bench

Article

Jan 2010

John C. Eastman

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Debate on Birthright Citizenship

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2010

John C. Eastman

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The Roberts Court and Federalism

Article

Jan 2009

Paul D. Clement

Dellinger, Walter E., III

John C. Eastman

Rosen Jeffrey

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The Founders' Intent, Constitutional Provisions, and Limits on Spending Power and Delegation

Article

Jan 2009

John C. Eastman

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Listening to the Enemy: The President's Power to Conduct Surveillance of Enemy Communications During Time of War

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2007

John C. Eastman

Ever since the New York Times published classified information in December 2005 about the efforts by the National Security Agency to intercept enemy communications to or from sources in the United States (as authorized by the President in his capacity as Commander-In-Chief), there has been a great hew and cry about the President's "illegal" conduct...

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Transcript—Marriage Equality in California: Legal and Political Prospects

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

Kenneth W. Starr

Shannon Price Minter

John C. Eastman

David C. Codell

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Reinterpreting the education clauses in state constitutions

Chapter

Jan 2007

John C. Eastman

In the past decade, a number of state courts have found a new "fundamental right" to education in centuries-old provisions in state constitutions. Those courts have then used that fundamental right determination to establish the level of educational funding that, from their particular point of view, is required to be constitutionally "adequate" and...

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Born in the USA? Re-assessing Birthright Citizenship in the Wake of 9/11

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

John C. Eastman

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Stare Decisis:Conservatism's One-Way Ratchet Problem

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2006

John C. Eastman

The doctrine of stare decisis serves several purposes, among them judicial efficiency, consistency, manageability, and reliance. These are all conservative virtues. Yet is it possible for a conservative-minded jurist to adhere strictly to principles of stare decisis that would require affirming precedents by progressive courts that did not similarl...

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How Large is Too Large for the Rule of Law? Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing to Consider Proposals to Split the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Article

Sep 2006

John C. Eastman

Proposals tosplit the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuithave been around since the 1950s. A serious proposal was made to split both the 5th and the 9th back in the 1970s; the 5th was in fact split (into the current 5th and the 11th), but the 9th Circuit remains as it was, by far the largest circuit court in the country, responsible for m...

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Philosopher King Courts: Is the Exercise of Higher Law Authority Without a Higher Law Foundation Legitimate?

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

When our nation's Founders designed our constitutional system of government as the means to secure the inalienable rights described in the Declaration of Independence, they placed great stock in the structural provisions of the Constitution, even greater than in a judicially-enforceable bill of rights. Although they certainly envisioned judicial re...

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Is the Solomon Amendment F.A.I.R.-Some Thoughts on Congress's Power to Impose This Condition on Federal Spending

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

In this article, I explore the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, by which Congress required that recipients of federal grants to institutions of higher education permit the military to conduct job interviews on campus despite the institution's objection to the military's ban on homosexuality in the military. I first consider the constitut...

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Altered States: Review of John T. Noonan, Jr., 'Narrowing the Nation's Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States'

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

Conversative Ninth Circuit Judge John Noonan's book, 'Narrowing the Nation's Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States', lambasts the Supreme Court's federalism decisions, a hallmark of the Rehnquist Court's revival of the limits on national power originally envisioned by those who drafted and ratified the Constitution. This review takes Judge...

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The Limited Nature of the Senate's Advice and Consent Role

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

This article reprints both the oral and prepared testimony provided to the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, on October 10, 2002, at a hearing entitled, A Judiciary Diminished is Justice Denied: The Constitution, the Senate, and the Vacancy Crisis in the Federal Judiciary. In it, I contend that th...

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Anatomy of the Federal Litigation: Challenging the Legislature's Actions in the Wake of Guinn v. Legislature

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

In July 2003, the Supreme Court of Nevada issued an extraordinary writ of mandate to the Nevada Legislature, directing it to enact a bill raising taxes to support increased education spending, by a simple majority vote rather than the 2/3 vote required by the Nevada Constitution. This article describes the federal court litigation that was filed to...

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Judicial Review Of Unenumerated Rights: Does Marburys Holding Apply In a Post-Warren Court World?

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

Prepared to commemmorate the bicentennial of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, this article explores the limits of the original holding, its expansive interpretation in the 20th Century to claims of judicial supremacy, even exclusiveness, in constitutional interpretation, and the various theories that would support such c...

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A Seminole Dissent?

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

This article, part of a symposium on the Rehnquist Court's 11th Amendment jurisprudence, contends that the Court's holding in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, is inconsistent with the original understanding of the 11th Amendment. While the 11th Amendment recognized state sovereignty, it did so only over areas where the states remained sovereign, not over...

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The Senate is Supposed to Advise and Consent, Not Obstruct and Delay

Article

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

Timothy Sandefur

This article explores the original understanding of the Constitution's division of power between the President and the Senate with respect to judicial appointments. The President is given the sole power to nominate, and the primary role in appointment, while the Senate was understood as having a much more limited role, serving as a check on the Pre...

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The Magic of Vouchers is No Sleight of Hand: A Reply to Steven K. Green

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

In a provacative 2002 article, The Illusory Aspect of 'Private Choice' for Constitutional Analysis,, Professor Steven Green challenged both the constitutionality and the policy benefits of school vouhcers. The Supreme Court put to rest the constitutional objection in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris shortly after the article was published, but I argue here...

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Lessons from the Past: Is There Anything New in Constitutional Law?

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

Review of David P. Currie, The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians, 1801-1829 (Univ. of Chicago Press 2001). Modern-day constitutional lawyers learn their trade largely from reading and discussing judicial opinions, but there is in our nation's history a rich tradition of constitutional debate in the other branches of the government. In thi...

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The Revival of Federalism

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

This article explores the efforts over the past quarter century by the conservative public interest law movement to revive the principle of federalism and, ultimately, the notion that the federal government is one of only limited, enumerated powers. Focussing on the Commerce Clause, the article traces the original meaning of the powers of the feder...

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Justice Stephen Field: Frontier Justice or Justice at the Natural Rights Frontier?

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

Timothy Sandefur

Produced for a conference by the Claremont Institute commemmorating the 150th Anniversary of California statehood, this article explores the jurisprudential philosophy of one of California's great jurists,Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field. From his decisions dealing with property rights, government regulation, and Chinese exclusion statutes, Jus...

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Re-Entering the Arena: Restoring a Judicial Role For Enforcing Limits on Federal Mandates

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2006

John C. Eastman

The mini-revolution in 1994 that gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in forty years, and which led to the enactment of the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) as part of the Contract with America, was designed in part to revive some foundational constitutional principles, including federalism, enumerated powers, and the n...

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Re-Evaluating the Privileges or Immunities Clause

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2006

John C. Eastman

In its 1999 case, Saenz v. Roe, the Supreme Court re-invigorated a long-dead clause of the Constitution, the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment. Oddly, though, the opinion was written by Justice Stevens, one of the staunchest devotees of a living Constitution rather thanoriginalism. As odd: Justice Thomas, the most consistent or...

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A Fistful of Denial: The Supreme Court Takes a Pass on Commerce Clause Challenges to Environmental Laws

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

Ever since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in United States v. Lopez invalidating the Gun-Free School Zones Act as beyond the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause power, scholarly commentators from both sides of the ideological spectrum have wondered whether the Court would apply the reasoning of that case in the context of federal environment...

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Politics and the Court: Did the Supreme Court Really Move Left Because of Embarrassment Over Bush v. Gore?

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

The premise of the "hot topics" panel at the 2005 AALS convention was that the Rehnquist Court had in 2004 retreated from its bolder conservatism, asserting itself on the side of individual liberty against a federal government that had grown increasingly cavalier toward civil liberties during three years of a war on terror and two decades of a rene...

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Adequacy and the Rights Revolution: Reinterpreting the Education Clauses in State Constitutions

Article

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

In the past decade, a number of state courts have found a new "fundamental right" to education in centuries-old state constitutional provisions. These courts have then used the fundamental rights determinations to establish levels of educational funding that, in the court's view, are required to be constitutionally "adequate", and even to mandate t...

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Strictly Scrutinizing Campaign Finance Restrictions (& the Courts that Judge Them)

Article

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

This article carefully parses the Supreme Court's decisions in Buckley v. Valeo and its progeny to ascertain whether restrictions on contributions to independent expenditures are subject to strict or a less exacting scrutiny, and whether they are unconstitutional under either level of scrutiny. Part I summarizes the pre-Nixon circuit split that had...

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When Did Education Become a Civil Right? An Assessment of State Constitutional Provisions for Education, 1776-1900

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

This article provides a comprehensive review of provisions for public education found in American state constitutions from 1776 through 1900, chronologically tracing the pedigrees of the different formulations. It concludes that most provisions merely provided hortatory guidelines for legislatures, not judicially-enforceable rights to specific leve...

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We Are a Religious People Whose Institutions Presuppose a Supreme Being

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

This article challenges the separationist view of the Establishment Clause adopted by the Supreme Court in Everson and other cases, and instead explores Justice Douglas's important contention in Zorach v. Clausen that We are a Religious People Whose Institutions Presuppose a Supreme Being. Drawing on sources from the founding, such as the Declarati...

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Taking Justice Thomas Seriously

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

Substantive Review of Scott Gerber's book, First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas(New York University Press, 1999). This review praises Gerber's recognition that Justice Thomas has articulated a consistent and thoughtful original theory view of the Constitution, distinct from the original practice, most positivist view of constitut...

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Restoring the General to the General Welfare Clause

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2006

John C. Eastman

This article examines the original understanding of the Constitution's Spending Clause (giving Congress the power to tax for the common defense and general welfare) and the competing interpretations of it offered by Alexander Hamilton, on the one hand, and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, on the other. Madison contended that the Clause's referen...

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Open to Merit of Every Description-An Historical Assessment of the Constitution's Qualification Clauses

Article

Full-text available

May 2006

John C. Eastman

In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, the Supreme Court, by a split 5-4 decision, invalidated an Arkansas term limits provision because it effectively imposed a qualification for office and, according to the Court's reading of the historical and textual evidence,. . .neither Congress nor the States . . . possess the power to supplement the exclusi...

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Understanding Justice Sutherland As He Understood Himself

Article

Full-text available

May 2006

John C. Eastman

Substantive review of Hadley Arkes' book, The Return of George Sutherland: Restoring a Jurisprudence of Natural Rights, which assesses the role Justice Sutherland played in trying to uphold constitutional limitations against the onslaught of the New Deal.

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Does the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press Clause Place the Institutional Media Above the Law of Classified Secrets?

Article

May 2006

John C. Eastman

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, contending that Section 798 of the Espionage Act, prohibiting the publication of classified information regarding U.S. communications capabilities, can constitutionally be applied to the media, for several reasons: 1) A majority of the Justices in the Pen...

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Full Faith and Republican Guarantees: Gay Marriage, FMPA, and the Courts

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2006

John C. Eastman

"What difference does it make to your heterosexual marriage if I enter into a homosexual marriage?" Such is the frequent rejoinder to claims that traditional marriage needs to be protected by state or federal law or even by a federal constitutional amendment. Here I explore answers to that rejoinder. Marriage may be an individual bond, but it is fo...

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The Constitutionality of the NSA Surveillance Program: A Letter to the House Judiciary Committee

Article

Jan 2006

John C. Eastman

Following the December 2005 disclosure by the New York Times of a highly-classified National Security Agency surveillance program that was authorized by President Bush shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, there has been a great national debate, both scholarly and popular, about the legality of the program. Op...

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Born in the U.S.A.? Rethinking Birthright Citizenship in the Wake of 9/11

Article

Sep 2005

John C. Eastman

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims (Sept. 29, 2005) contends that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment has been misconstrued as mandating birthright citizenship. Rather, the clause was a codification of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which quite clear...

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Judicial review of unenumerated rights: Does Marburys holding apply in a post-warren court world?

Article

Jun 2005

John C. Eastman

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Federal Legislation and States Rights: Of Hapless Toads, Home-Grown Medical Marijuana, and Wiccan Worship in State Prisons

Article

Jan 2005

John C. Eastman

This article assesses the much-touted federalism revival of the Rehnquist Court, and concludes that its success in restoring the Constitution's original limits on federal power was only marginal, at best, for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court's holding in United States v. Lopez was significantly tempered (even made incoherent) by the Court's re...

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Honoring the Oath of Office: Ideology in Judicial Confirmation

Article

Jan 2004

John C. Eastman

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Re-entering the arena: Restoring a judicial role for enforcing limits on federal mandates

Article

Jun 2002

John C. Eastman

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Wrong Claim, Wrong Party, Wrong Court: Assessing the Petition Brought by a Coalition of Clergy, Lawyers, & Professors on Behalf of Detainees Held by the U.S. Military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Article

Mar 2002

John C. Eastman

This brief article assesses the merits of the habeas corpus petition filed by a group of Los Angeles-based attorneys and professors on behalf of terrorists being detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It argues that the petitioners had no standing; that the Central District of California had no geographic connection and therefore no...

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Strictly scrutinizing campaign finance restrictions (and the courts that judge them)

Article

Sep 2000

John C. Eastman

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Understanding Justice Sutherland as He Understood Himself

Article

Oct 1997

John C. Eastman

Harry V. Jaffa

Hadley Arkes

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The GAO's Assault on the Executive Branch

Article

John C. Eastman

This article explores the constitutional issues involved with the General Accounting Office's suit to force Vice President Cheney to disclose notes and attendance records from confidential, executive-branch meetings of an energy task force established by the President to give advice on a national energy policy. Noting that the presidency was delibe...

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From Feudalism to Consent: Rethinking Birthright Citizenship

Article

Full-text available

John C. Eastman

It is today routinely believed that under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, mere birth on U.S. soil is sufficient to obtain U.S. citizen-ship. However strong this commonly believed inter-pretation might appear, it is incompatible not only with the text of the Citizenship Clause (particularly as informed by the debate surrounding...

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