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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
On August 4, John Eastman tried to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to delay attorney discipline proceedings against him in California. The president’s former counsel protested that he could not defend himself without risk of self incrimination in a potential criminal prosecution in Fulton County, Georgia.
Three weeks later, Judge Yvette Roland of the State Bar Court rejected the petition, holding that Eastman had already waived his right against self incrimination by testifying for upwards of eight hours without once pleading the Fifth about matters related to electoral interference in Fulton County. She did not add that Eastman constantly flaps his yap in public without apparent regard for legal jeopardy, and so his protestations ring a bit thin.
Since Eastman first filed his protest, he has indeed been charged in Georgia, facing nine charges in District Attorney Fani Willis’s sweeping RICO indictment. But that has not stopped the lawyer from running his mouth on TV.
Last night, he sat down on Fox with his fellow former Justice Thomas clerk Laura Ingraham to discuss the Fulton County case.
“On the RICO side of the Fulton County case, that would require findings of bad faith on the part of all the codefendants that were engaged in this ‘RICO conspiracy’ according to this Fani Willis,” Ingraham snarked, making sarcastic air quotes with her fingers, adding, “That would have to be you all agreeing, explicitly or implicitly, that y’all knew that this was all phony and that your decision amongst yourselves was to advance a plan to overturn the election.”
“They’ve got all the evidence, they’ve got all the emails. My phone was seized over a year ago, so they’ve got all that stuff as well,” he scoffed. “And I challenge them to find a single email or communication that supports that implausible theory.”
O RLLY?
How about that message to Pence’s aide Greg Jacob in the wake of the attack on the Capitol in which Eastman encouraged a little light criming in light of the fact that the mob had already prevented strict compliance with the procedures of the Electoral Count Act?
So now that the precedent has been set that the Electoral Count Act is not quite so sacrosanct as was previously claimed, I ask for you to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.
Or the December 5, 2020 email in which Eastman expressed reservations about having Trump sign onto a lawsuit in Georgia which made false representations about votes being cast “10,315 deceased people, 2,560 felons, and 2,423 unregistered voters.” Spoiler Alert: he signed it.
There were the long email chains among Trump’s various lawyers in which they plotted to scare state legislators into certifying the fake electors and stealing Biden’s electoral votes. Or, as Eastman wrote, “Let’s figure out a targeted way to deploy them. Rolling thunder? One legislature at a time? The others can see it coming.”
Plus there were those pesky memos in which he advocated for Pence to ignore the plain language of the Electoral Count Act, toss out the duly elected swing state electors, and either recognize the fake ones or pretend that the states had failed to send any at all.
But aside from that, BUPKIS. That’s why Eastman sent Rudy Giuliani an email in the days after January 6, saying “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.” Because he was supremely clear that he’d done nothing wrong and there was no possibility of criminal jeopardy.
Later in the interview, Eastman insisted that there was loads of evidence of electoral fraud.
“I haven’t seen that evidence,” Ingraham protested, “And I’m always wanting to see everything.”
As if the entire world hasn’t read her texts with Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity complaining that the straight news dorks wouldn’t let them spew election fraud conspiracy theories 24-7 after Trump lost the 2020 election.
Water seeks its own level … and so does bullshit.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
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