John Eastman

The House January 6 committee is expected to scrutinize the once-obscure legal scholar, months after a federal judge said it's “more likely than not” that ...

Just days after the Capitol riot, over 100 Chapman University faculty members signed an open letter arguing Eastman “does not belong on our campus,” and Chapman President Daniele Struppa denounced Eastman but rebuffed calls to fire him. Several news outlets reported Wednesday the committee got emails between Eastman and Ginni Thomas, a right-wing activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who pushed to overturn Biden’s win—but the emails’ contents aren’t known. Separately, in one December 2020 email, Eastman alluded to a “heated fight” over whether the Supreme Court should take up an election challenge, the New York Times reported Wednesday. It’s unclear if Eastman had information on the high court's usually-secretive deliberations. And one day later, Eastman called White House attorney Eric Herschmann to discuss legal efforts in Georgia, Herschmann told the January 6 committee in testimony released this week. “If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution.” Eastman’s interest in the election didn’t seem to evaporate after the January 6 riot.

The Trump lawyer, who pleaded the fifth 100 times, was still badgering Pence's team even after the Capitol had been stormed and subsequently cleared.

The email sent to Pence lawyer Greg Jacob came after he, along with the former VP's staff and family, had been sheltering in place in a secure location during the riot. Former Trump lawyer John Eastman asked former Vice President Mike Pence's counsel to break the law, in writing, on the night of January 6, 2021. - The January 6 committee showed an email from Eastman to Pence's counsel on the night of the attack.

A tweet from former President Donald Trump is displayed during the third hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. ...

At another point, Jacob shared an email correspondence he had with Eastman in the days after the Jan. 6 violence. In fact, according to testimony and evidence presented to the committee, even Eastman didn’t buy into such a theory. Overall, Aguilar said, Eastman pleaded the fifth 100 times. “It tells us that they fear they’re going to be charged, or more generally, that they’ve engaged in conduct that’s a federal crime,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, tells TIME. Several Pence aides said they never found the argument persuasive. Such an admission was consistent with the testimony of other witnesses present at Thursday’s hearing, the committee’s third this month.

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack is in possession of email correspondence between conservative attorney John ...

To determine whether, you know, the same people who were establishing a backchannel to the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and the domestic violent extremist movement also had a backchannel, somehow, to the Supreme Court of the United States of America." Chesebro and a lawyer for Eastman did not respond to the Times' requests for comment. He added, "For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix." He demonstrated support for the claim that election fraud is a threat to America. It was a theory Pence ultimately rejected -- to the ire of Trump Thomas did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

A lawyer advising President Donald J. Trump claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices ...

But just below the surface, there’s a related question: How would Eastman know about a “heated fight” among justices on the high court? The lawyer, John Eastman, made the statement in a Dec. 24, 2020, exchange with a pro-Trump lawyer and Trump campaign officials over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin. Again, there’s a surface-level significance to this, and then there’s the deeper meaning. Maybe the dots shouldn’t be connected this way. By any fair measure, John Eastman is among the most controversial figures in the larger Jan. 6 scandal. A lawyer advising President Donald J. Trump claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the president’s efforts to overturn his defeat at the polls, two people briefed on the email said.

People arrive before the third hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, on June 16, 2022, in Washington, D.C..

Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee that on the morning of Jan. 6, Giuliani told him he was “probably right” that the plan was illegal. It goes without saying that Trump was not happy Pence didn’t go along with the scheme. “There is just no way that the framers of the Constitution, who divided and authority, who separated it out, who had broken away from George III and declared him to be a tyrant, there is no way they would have put in the hands of one person the authority to determine who was going to be president of the United States.” Jacob went into further detail about his communications with Eastman ahead of Jan. 6, making clear that Eastman was well aware that the plan wasn’t legally sound. “The history was absolutely decisive,” Jacob continued. Jacob is also testifying before the committee.

Eastman said he knew about an internal “heated fight” at the Supreme Court. He was talking to Justice Clarence Thomas' wife.

That 8-1 decision opened the vault and helped the select committee gather key evidence. As for the email communications I had with Mrs. Thomas? As you can see for yourselves, she invited me to give an update about election litigation to a group she met with periodically,” he said in a statement released Thursday afternoon. And we also know that Ginni Thomas played an active role in trying to push to overturn the 2020 results. That network of clerks is known to generally have remained close, even by the cozy standards of the Supreme Court. Thomas also has ties with the Claremont Institute, where Eastman works: The Supreme Court justice has spoken there in the past and he regularly quotes the institute’s founder. Eastman clerked for Clarence Thomas in 1996 and 1997, early on in his career.

John Eastman knew his plan to have Mike Pence block certification of the election would lose 9-0 before the Supreme Court, the ex-VP's attorney Greg Jacob ...

“You would have had a constitutional jump-ball situation with that standoff.” “I asked John: can’t we both agree this is a terrible idea?” Jacob said. Eastman also apparently told Jacob that the courts wouldn’t get involved, and that they would instead invoke the “political question” doctrine. “He had recommended against it on the 4th,” Jacob confirmed. If the courts did not step in to resolve this, there was nobody else to resolve it.” That position would have been opposed by the House and Senate. “I expressed my vociferous disagreement with that point,” Jacob said. Jacob said that he walked Eastman through the multiple reasons why the Constitution wouldn’t support Eastman’s approach. It would be a disastrous situation. Eastman and Rudy Giuliani both pushed the theory that Pence could reject the certification of Biden’s election. Jacob resisted this plan and blamed Eastman’s theory for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “I said that issue might well have to be decided in the streets,” Jacob said.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone thought it was wrong according to testimony. Eric Herschmann said he told Eastman that it didn't make any sense beforehand and ...

Just an absolute clown show, which of course is exactly the environment required for someone like Eastman to burrow his way in and get the ear of the president. However, it’s the folks postured as — to borrow from Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien’s testimony — “team normal” whose testimony fascinates me as someone who used to labor over timelines built off documentary and testimonial evidence. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone thought it was wrong according to testimony. Sponsored And yet based on what we’re seeing, no one seemed all that worried about putting John Eastman on stage to explain his theory to a crowd of proto-fascist goons. Sponsored

Jan 6. was “a coup in search of a legal theory,” Judge Carter wrote about the plot to pressure Pence into deciding the election. The committee laid out the ...

The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act. On the morning of Jan. 6, he called me out of the blue and I was like getting dressed and we had an intellectual discussion about … the VP’s role. According to Short, Eastman presented two options for what Pence could do: Reject Biden electors he personally disagreed with outright and declare himself and Trump the victor, or he could call a recess of the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 and send the “disputed” electors back to state legislatures to be recertified in favor of Trump. White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified that he told Eastman directly that his plan was “completely crazy,” that he was “out of your effin’ mind,” and that “you’re going to cause riots in the streets.” This warning didn’t seem to trouble Eastman. According to Herschmann’s videotaped deposition, in advance of Jan. 6, Eastman said that he’d be OK with that. At that Jan. 5 meeting, though, Eastman acknowledged that there was no legal or historical standing for the vice president to unilaterally decide the election. “His first words after introduction and as we sat down were, ‘I’m here to request that you reject the electors in the disputed states,’” according to Jacob. The former Pence attorney was so shocked by this reversal that he wrote down in contemporaneous notes that were presented before the committee “Requesting VP reject.” On Jan. 4, Jacob attended an Oval Office meeting with Pence, Trump, Short, and Eastman during which Eastman pushed the vice president to unilaterally overturn the election. Jacob also testified that he too warned Eastman of the likely violence and chaos his path would bring upon the nation. Trump advisor Jason Miller testified that White House Counsel “Pat Cipollone thought the idea was nutty and had at one point confronted Eastman basically with the same sentiment.” Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, meanwhile testified that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told him prior to Jan. 6 that he also believed the vice president had no authority to do what Trump was asking. “There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the vice president has that kind of authority.” was “a coup in search of a legal theory,” Judge Carter wrote about the plot to pressure Pence into deciding the election. Pence narrowly escaped potential harm when rioters came within 40 feet of confronting him as he moved to a secure location, the committee revealed on Thursday. On top of these revelations, we also learned that Eastman sought to shield himself from potential criminal liability following the insurrection and his failed attempts at stopping the peaceful transition of power.

I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” John Eastman wrote, shortly after the Capitol riot, according to the ...

Much of the hearing on Thursday was designed to show that Eastman — and pretty much everyone else around him — doubted the legality of his plan to stop the certification, which Ed Kilgore notes appears to be part of an effort to convince the Justice Department to criminally prosecute Eastman and Trump. Representative Pete Aguilar displayed a memo, written by Eastman in October 2020, showing that the attorney doubted that Pence could choose which electors counted and which ones did not. “We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her to come talk to the committee,” Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, said Thursday. (Eastman denies trying to influence the Thomas family.) Eastman saying he had inside information on closed deliberations inside the Court resulted in Ginni Thomas (the conspiracy-minded wife of Justice Clarence Thomas), with whom Eastman has corresponded, possibly expecting a deposition.

John Eastman, the lawyer who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election, confirmed Thursday that the ...

The email showed Thomas inviting him to speak on Dec. 8 to Frontliners, which she described as “a group of grassroots state leaders.” Neither Eastman nor Ginni Thomas responded to a request for comment. The other documents Eastman was ordered to turn over contained agendas for two more meetings of the group, the judge wrote. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the House committee, said Thursday that the committee had sent a letter asking Thomas for an interview. They were sent by the group’s “high-profile leader,” he wrote. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter last week ordered Eastman to release more than 100 emails and other records, overruling Eastman’s claims that those communications were privileged and should be protected.

Trump lawyer John Eastman is shown on a screen during a House January 6 committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 16, 2022.

Jacob later said that Eastman tried to argue that the courts would not get involved in the dispute. Jacob said he responded that such a scenario would have created "an unprecedented constitutional jump-ball situation with that standoff. Jacob went on to describe how after Congress had reconvened following the insurrection, Eastman sent him an email later that evening. , the law that governed the congressional certification of electoral votes. And he initially started, 'Well, I think maybe you would only lose 7-2', and after some further discussion, acknowledged, 'Well yeah, you're right, we would lose 9, nothing .'" Because you think the election was stolen?'"