By any fair measure, John Eastman is having a bad week. It was in late June when the Republican lawyer who served as a key architect of Donald Trump’s anti-election plot, was greeted by FBI agents who executed a search warrant and seized his phone. Eastman made a series of allegations against the Justice Department and sought a court hearing.
As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained, a federal judge this week scrapped the hearing, concluding that there wasn’t any point to considering Eastman’s suspect claims.
And while that was no doubt disappointing for the controversial attorney, it wasn’t the only discouraging development. NBC News reported:
Former Trump lawyer John Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and cited attorney-client privilege Wednesday when he appeared before a Fulton County grand jury investigating attempts to influence the 2020 election in Georgia, his attorneys said.
I’m mindful of the fact that Trump World is filled with assorted figures, and there may be some readers asking right now, “Wait, which one is John Eastman?” So let’s revisit our recent coverage and review why he’s significant.
In theory, we should barely be aware of the Republican lawyer’s existence. After all, before joining Team Trump — the then-president saw him on Fox News and was impressed — Eastman was a rather obscure figure.
Even after Donald Trump’s defeat, Eastman, at least on paper, shouldn’t have been especially relevant. He didn’t work in the White House counsel’s office. He wasn’t the attorney general. He had no office in the Justice Department. Eastman was, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently described him on the air, a well-credentialed crank.
But the radical lawyer had one important thing going for him: The sitting president of the United States was eager to buy what Eastman was selling, and everyone around Trump quickly realized that the attorney’s views represented their boss’ views.
As a matter of law and politics, the lawyer may have been a fringe operator, better suited for a role on a far-right, C-list podcast than a seat in the Oval Office, but in the aftermath of Election Day 2020, Trump didn’t much care.
Why not? Because as the Jan. 6 committee’s recent hearings have helped prove, Eastman helped concoct an illegal scheme — a scheme Eastman knew to be illegal — that the then-president saw as an avenue to keeping power he hadn’t legitimately earned.
Eastman was not, however, merely a behind-the-scenes author of a ridiculous memo. The Republican lawyer also effectively played the role of a lobbyist, advocating on behalf of a plot he recognized as illegal, pleading with officials to go along with his plot, and even appearing at a pre-riot Jan. 6 rally to espouse his outlandish ideas to Trump’s radicalized followers.
As part of these efforts, Eastman also delivered remote testimony to a Georgia state Senate panel on Dec. 3, 2020, and peddled a variety of demonstrably false claims about the election results. The lawyer even told state lawmakers at the time that “the election can’t be validly certified.”
Fortunately, Eastman failed, but the fact that he tried is of ongoing interest to state law enforcement investigators examining possible election interference. It’s why he was subpoenaed to testify, leading to him repeatedly pleading the Fifth yesterday. It was not the first time. Eastman also reportedly pleaded the Fifth months ago with the Jan. 6 committee — by some accounts, roughly 100 times. Let’s also note for context that before Trump left office, Eastman sent Rudy Giuliani an email, declaring, “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.” (He may have feared prosecution, but he never received a pardon.) As for the list of high-profile figures from Team Trump who’ve pleaded the Fifth recently, let’s circle back to our earlier coverage and review: “The mob takes the Fifth Amendment,” Donald Trump said in 2016, deriding those who assert their right against self-incrimination. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” The relevance of the quote continues to linger.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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