“Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” U.S. District Court Judge David Carter ruled Monday, ordering former Chapman University law professor John Eastman to release key emails to the House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 committee.
Eastman, who left Chapman a week after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, used his Chapman email address to discuss his plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and attempted to shield emails, citing attorney-client privilege.
“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,” Judge Carter, perhaps best known locally for his involvement in homelessness cases in Orange County and Los Angeles, concluded.
Indeed, while Eastman and his supporters claim to be defenders of American institutions, they are clearly anything but.
Eastman’s bizarre plan called on Vice President Mike Pence, who was tasked with overseeing the ceremonial counting of electoral votes from the states, to halt the counting of electoral votes from key states.
“The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission — either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court,” Eastman’s memo emphasized.
Fortunately, Pence knew better and refused to go along with the plan, which was plainly an attack on American democracy and the Constitution.
Pence’s legal team, according to Judge Carter’s ruling, made clear to Eastman the illegality of his plan.
“The evidence also demonstrates that Dr. Eastman likely knew that the plan was unlawful,” wrote Judge Carter, noting, among other things, that Pence’s “legal counsel spent hours refuting each part of the plan to Dr. Eastman.”
“Dr. Eastman likely acted deceitfully and dishonestly each time he pushed an outcome-driven plan that he knew was unsupported by the law,” concluded Judge Carter.
The record establishes the extent of Eastman’s commitment to this lunacy.
“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 on Jan. 6, during the attack, in an email to Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob.
Eastman to this day defends his actions as being righteous because he was actually defending American democracy against election fraud. This is nonsense. All 50 states certified their election results. Audits and courts alike upheld the election results. There was no election-altering fraud. To believe otherwise at this point is to be drunk on conspiratorial Kool-Aid.
What President Donald Trump and John Eastman wanted to happen wasn’t a defense of democracy or the Constitution. It was an attack on both. Any conservative, constitutionalist or libertarian of sound mind must be able to admit this out loud.