Trump’s apprentice: Who is John Eastman, the lawyer accused of obstruction by Jan. 6 committee?
Ryan King
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At the heart of former President Donald Trump’s brain trust to hatch plans to overturn the 2020 election in the courtroom was conservative attorney John Eastman, who was criminally referred by the Jan. 6 committee on Monday.
Shortly after Trump’s 2020 defeat became apparent, Eastman penned a two-page memo outlining a bold strategy for Vice President Mike Pence to decertify the election results, which cascaded a series of events that ended with the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 — the day Congress convened to certify the election results.
READ IT: JAN. 6 COMMITTEE RELEASES FINAL REPORT’S EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Jan. 6 committee unveiled its referral of Eastman to the Justice Department on two charges for obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, ripping him for his legal machinations on ways Trump could stay in office and pinning blame on him for the disruption of the election certification on Jan. 6.
“Our Committee had the opportunity last Spring to present much of our evidence to a federal judge,” committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) declared during the hearing. “The judge concluded that both former President Donald Trump and John Eastman likely violated two federal criminal statutes.”
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Eastman had piqued Trump’s interest around the middle of 2019 when he was venting against the Russia investigation to Fox News’s Mark Levin and was summoned into the Oval Office about two months later, the New York Times reported.
He steadily rose as a favorite for exhibiting a penchant for telling Trump what he wanted to hear.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, he became captivated by Eastman’s legal musings. Eastman suggested that an alternative slate of electors in various battleground states could be used to tip the election to Trump if Pence refused to certify then-candidate Joe Biden’s victory. Pence refused to do so, contending he lacked the authority to decertify the election results.
All of this served as a centerpiece for Trump and his allies’ efforts to challenge the election.
The Trump-linked lawyer has long been in the Jan. 6 committee’s crosshairs, having been ensnared in a contentious monthslong court wrangling with the committee over subpoena demands for documents, particularly over his emails from Chapman University, where he worked as a law professor. Much to his chagrin, the committee succeeded in obtaining most of the documents it sought.
As a result, the committee poured through his communications to associates in the run-up to Jan. 6 and discovered that he had been “warned repeatedly that his plan was illegal and ‘completely crazy,'” according to a preview of the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report.
“The evidence shows that Eastman knew in advance of the 2020 election that Vice President Pence could not refuse to count electoral votes on January 6th,” the preview explained.
Eastman has since left his post at Chapman University and has come under scrutiny from the DOJ. Over the summer, he was searched and seized. The DOJ has been conducting a sweeping investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in tandem with the roughly 18 months of work done by the Jan. 6 committee.
“We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today,” Raskin added, “just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy we describe in our report.”
Others name-dropped by the committee’s preview report for the alleged conspiracies linked to Trump include former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark, former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
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Clark drew notable focus in the public meeting Monday. Clark who was the acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division during the fallout from the 2020 election, drafted a letter for the DOJ to send to officials in critical states casting doubt on the election outcome. Panel member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) emphasized that Clark intended to send out that letter.
Trump eyed Clark to serve as attorney general after Bill Barr and later acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen refused to capitulate to him on his election fraud claims, according to the committee.