John Eastman’s legal theories are called “snake oil” in the guise of legal opinion by Greg Jacob, an aide to Mike Pence, as reported by the Washington Post. The two lawyers got into quite a tete a tete in the weeks before the riot at the Capitol and on the day of. It is devoutly to be wished that the January 6 Select Committee is able to flesh out more details from the outline of events presented here.
“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
Eastman was apparently unconscious to the fact that tempers had snapped at the Capitol. Jacob said, Eastman “displayed a shocking lack of awareness of how those practical implications were playing out in real time.”
Jacob’s draft article, Eastman’s emails and accounts of other previously undisclosed actions by Eastman offer new insight into the mind-sets of figures at the center of an episode that pushed American democracy to the brink. They show that Eastman’s efforts to persuade Pence to block Trump’s defeat were more extensive than has been reported previously, and that the Pence team was subjected to what Jacob at the time called “a barrage of bankrupt legal theories.”
Eastman confirmed the emails in interviews with The Post but denied that he was blaming Pence for the violence. He defended his actions, saying that Trump’s team was right to exhaust “every legal means” to challenge a result that it argued was plagued by widespread fraud and irregularities.
Plain English shows that he was blaming Pence. “You did not do what was necessary,” i.e. what Trump wanted him to do and what Eastman convinced Trump that he could get away with.
In the days before the attack, Eastman was working to salvage Trump’s presidency out of a “command center” in rooms at the Willard hotel near the White House, alongside such top Trump allies as Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Jacob wrote in his draft article that Eastman and Giuliani were part of a “cadre of outside lawyers” who had “spun a web of lies and disinformation” in an attempt to pressure Pence to betray his oath of office and the Constitution.
Jacob wrote that legal authorities should consider taking action against the attorneys.
“Now that the moment of immediate crisis has passed, the legal profession should dispassionately examine whether the attorneys involved should be disciplined for using their credentials to sell a stream of snake oil to the most powerful office in the world, wrapped in the guise of a lawyer’s advice,” he wrote in the draft.
An anti-LGBT lawyer, one who argued a birther theory against Kamala Harris, was instrumental in persuading Trump and trying to persuade Pence to overthrow two and a half centuries of precedent and procedure and throw out the results of a free and fair election. Think about that for a moment. John Eastman is a menace to society.
Eastman’s memos gave several options for Pence to use the vice president’s ceremonial role of counting electoral college votes to halt Trump’s defeat. Eastman has argued that the 1887 Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional, and that the vice president has power under the 12th Amendment to decide whether electoral votes are valid.
Under the most drastic of the options outlined in the memos, Pence would have rejected electoral votes for Biden from states where Republicans were claiming fraud, making Trump the winner — a proposal that Eastman has more recently tried to disown as a “crazy” suggestion he did not endorse.
Eastman made the case for Pence to act during a meeting in the Oval Office with Trump, Pence, Jacob and Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, on the afternoon of Jan. 4, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The meeting was reported in the media soon after. Pence advisers said they had never heard of Eastman before January.
The meeting was called, the people said, because Trump was frustrated that Pence was not acceding to his demands, and wanted the vice president to hear arguments from Eastman, whom he viewed as having more credibility in legal circles than some of Trump’s other legal advisers.
Eastman argued that Pence should at least try the maneuver of not certifying electors on Jan. 6, because it had never been done before, and so had not been ruled on by the courts, one of the people familiar with the discussions said. Eastman told The Post he did not recall making “any such statement.”
Eastman wanted Pence to create a constitutional crisis simply because he could, is what all this distills down to. Evidently Jacob outlined why this was pure madness because here’s part of his memorialization of what was said that day.
Jacob wrote in his draft article that a Trump lawyer conceded to him in a Jan. 5 meeting that “not a single member of the Supreme Court would support his position,” that“230 years of historical practice were firmly against it,” and that “no reasonable person would create a rule that invested a single individual with unilateral authority to determine the validity of disputed electoral votes for President of the United States.”
The two people familiar with the matter said Eastman was the only lawyer in the Jan. 5 meeting.
By the end of the two-hour meeting, the people said, Eastman had conceded that having Pence reject Biden electors was not a good plan.
But it did not stop there by any means. No, Eastman kept advocating that Pence not certify the election and just see what happened.
Eastman also suggested on several occasions, according to the people with knowledge of the meetings, that Pence could intervene because the courts would invoke “the political question doctrine” and not intervene.
“But if the courts stayed out of a standoff between the Vice President and Congress over the fate of the presidency, then where would the issue be decided? In the streets?” Jacob wrote in his draft op-ed.
That’s what Eastman wanted, apparently. It seems clear that he was advocating for it. Mike Pence’s name would have become synonymous with Benedict Arnold’s if he had done something as bald faced illegal and stupid as he was being asked to do. But by this time Trump had become convinced that Pence could and should do exactly what Eastman was advocating and that’s when Trump turned on Pence. He sent the mob marching down the street to the Capitol and you know the rest.
Mr Arnold was an officer that won battles in the American Revolution. He was crippled by that effort. When neither congress or Washington promoted him for his bravery, he became bitter & then he became a turncoat. He was appointed to head up West Point. He was in secret negotiations to hand it over to the British. Sure he became a traitor, but someone enlighten me. When exactly did ANY of our present traitors actually wear the uniform & get wounded fighting for our country? The only thing they ever fought for was a better table at posh restaurants & haggle over upscale townhome prices in Georgetown. Not all traitors are equal. Some had honor & lost it. Others were & are vile slithering creatures that crawled out from under the rocks in law school. Some even from Harvard.
Eastman is trying to keep his own rear end out of jail, because he was pushing the insurrection and he knows it.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.
The more I hear from Eastman, the crazier he sounds just like Lin Wood. I don’t think we should trust. it seems like he’s changing his story to save his behind.
This Eastman person, is he supposed to actually know something about the constitution and/or law? Perhaps a graduate from that liberty university place that spews out so many “scholars”.
what a putz.
He was Dean of a law school- don’t post idiotic comments without doing a modicum of homework– you just embarrass yourself & show how little you know.
Was is the operative word. Chapman University (where that law school you refer to is located) is a private research university. That’s sort of beside the point. Eastman is a graduate of the University of Illinois’ law school and that is in fact a quite upper tier school. Enough to get him a clerkship with a SCOTUS Justice. (Clarance Thomas) What might be of the greatest significance now is that Eastman is under investigation by the California Bar and in danger of losing his license to practice law. On the balance I’ll readily concede the man is no dumbass and in fact has displayed some serious legal chops during his career even if I don’t care for he manner/causes (The Federalist Society in particular) how he’s used them. I do think it’s fair to say somewhere he went from hard-core conservative stalwart to off-the-rails and in recent times has displayed particularly bad judgement including literally putting advocacy of a federal crime in writing.