Government

Trump Coup Lawyer John Eastman Calls Himself 'White Knight Hero' In Spectacular Interview

Not all heroes wear capes. Not everyone who capes is a hero.

By  
on

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Why is John Eastman still talking? Is Trump’s favorite coup-curious counsel under the impression that there is something he could say that would help? Because even if there was, this ain’t it.

“Call me the white-knight hero here, talking [Trump] down from the more aggressive position,” Eastman told the National Review’s John McCormack in a spectacular train wreck of an interview that ran this morning under the headline “John Eastman vs. the Eastman Memo.”

Suffice it to say, no one will be calling John Eastman a “hero” after watching him try to claim that he meant something other than exactly what he said in those two infamous memos where he argued that the Vice President has the sole authority to reject duly certified electoral college votes. And not just in the memos — the man stood next to Rudy Giuliani onstage at the January 6 rally and blessed their braying for Mike Pence to prevent Biden’s certification.

“All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at one o’clock he let the legislatures of the states look into this so that we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not!” he shouted, before the crowd moved toward the Capitol to make sure that his demand was carried out.

And yet, in his discussions with McCormack, Eastman insists that these were just “internal discussion memos for the legal team,” prepared at the request of “somebody in the legal team” whose name Eastman can’t now recall, because he’s such a busy guy, yaknow.

“I was asked to kind of outline how each of those scenarios would work and then orally present my views on whether I thought they were valid or not, so that’s what those memos did,” he said.

Sponsored

In fact, that is not “what those memos did.” Those memos mapped out multiple strategies whereby “VP Pence opens the ballots, determines on his own which is valid, asserting that the authority to make that determination under the 12th Amendment, and the Adams and Jefferson precedents, is his alone (anything in the Electoral Count Act to the contrary is therefore unconstitutional).” Eastman had three ways to make the math work to get Biden under the magical 270 electoral vote threshold and throw the vote to the House, where Republicans could ratf*ck it.

Pence was supposed to brazen it out — “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.” — and hope that Republican legislators would play along with him.

“IF the Republicans in the State Delegations stand firm, the vote there is 26 states for Trump, 23 for Biden, and 1 split vote,” he wrote in the longer memo. But in the interview with McCormack, Eastman downplayed the idea as mere speculation, because Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney would never have gone along with it.

“So anybody who thinks that that’s a viable strategy is crazy,” he scoffed, ignoring the fact that he himself is the one who proposed it and apparently Trump’s people took it seriously enough to pass him along to Sen. Mike Lee.

Hilariously, Eastman first claimed that he “never had any dealings” with the Utah Republican. But when McCormack pointed out that Robert Costa and Bob Woodward had reported extensively in their book Peril on Lee’s rejection of Eastman’s scribblings — “You might as well make your case to Queen Elizabeth II. Congress can’t do this. You’re wasting your time.” — the attorney made a miraculous recovery from his amnesiac episode.

Sponsored

“I want to be very precise here: I said at the time I did not recall having any conversations with Mike Lee, and I certainly don’t have any record of having given him the memo,” he told McCormack. “But now that I’ve seen that quote from — I do recall that Mike Lee called me at one point. I don’t remember the subject of the conversation.”

Once the White House finally grokked that Pence wasn’t going to unilaterally toss out electoral votes on Eastman’s theory that “we’re no longer playing by Queensbury Rules,” they switched to a strategy of getting him to adjourn congress and toss the issue back to swing state legislatures for “a comprehensive audit/investigation of the election returns in their states.”

As with the plot to allow House Republicans to overturn the election, Eastman defends himself by pointing it his own incompetence, noting that “even if you had that authority, it would be foolish to exercise it in the absence of state legislatures having certified the alternate slate of electors.” It’s not a coup plot if it’s patently unworkable, right?

Except, ROLL TAPE:

Because of these illegal actions by state and local election officials (and, in some cases, judicial officials, the Trump electors in the above 6 states (plus in New Mexico) met on December 14, cast their electoral votes, and transmitted those votes to the President of the Senate (Vice President Pence). There are thus dual slates of electors from 7 states.

Eastman closed out this shitshow debacle by assuring McCormack that he’d never dream of suggesting that the Vice President has such godlike powers and that he’d give the same to Vice President Kamala Harris if she came knocking. Which is mighty … nice coming from a guy who wrote an article suggesting that Harris wasn’t even eligible to run for president because her parents were both immigrants and thus she’s not a “real” American.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was some extremely weak shit. It was ridiculous when the Claremont Institute tried to ride to Eastman’s rescue last week, and it’s even more pathetic now with Eastman puckered up and staring into the mirror trying to put lipstick on this pig himself.

John Eastman vs. the Eastman Memo [National Review]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

, , , ,