Thanks for your bullshit
John Eastman, the Federalist Society-bred legal eagle of Donald Trump's attempted coup, might get disbarred. He's on trial in front of a California judge on an 11-count complaint alleging that his public statements, his advice, and his two memos mapping out how Mike Pence could help steal the election mean he should lose his license to practice law.
Eastman's trial so far is pretty much a rehash of stolen-election mythology, how courts and election administrators debunked it, and how Eastman helped push the "fake elector" scheme in Georgia, in the Oval Office, and beyond.
Eastman's defense (so far) is that his advice to Trump, Pence, and state legislators was, in the end, normal lawyer stuff. It may have been unprecedented and controversial, his lawyers say, but it was legit legal advice—not counseling a conspiracy he knew was illegal.
Eastman runs the risk that federal prosecutors will indict him in the Special Counsel probe of Jan. 6 and the coup attempt. The Jan. 6 committee certainly thought that when they referred Eastman for charges (page 105.) But it turns out that were it not for John Eastman, we might not be talking about federal indictments for Trump and other coup plotters at all.
This week the Washington Post confirmed what many legal experts and accountability-philes had suspected in the many months after the insurrection: DOJ avoided even investigating Trump and his lieutenants in the coup plot for over a year, even while public evidence mounted that Jan. 6 was not just a spontaneous riot, but the culmination of a planned coup.
In those days of 2021 and early 2022, before dual Special Counsel investigations and grand juries, there was widespread worry that bad-faith claims of DOJ bias by the Trumpist GOP had cowed AG Merrick Garland into inaction. Now we know that's exactly what happened!
Read all about it. The Jan. 6 committee's emerging evidence of criminal activity made the public ask, repeatedly, where was DOJ? Privately, the revelations embarrassed DOJ officials.
But this is where Eastman comes in. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in a Jan. 6 committee-related lawsuit in March, 2022 that Eastman's emails included evidence of a likely criminal conspiracy with Trump. Press reports and an insider book revealed Eastman's Oval Office advocacy for a block-and-switch plan where Pence would reject duly chosen electors and allow GOP-led swing states to replace them with fake ones.
Not until all this, according to this week's report, did DOJ begin to stir and open a criminal probe. Garland and his deputies didn't want to invite more GOP accusations of political bias or fan the MAGA machine with the idea of real accountability for Trump.
Trumpist Republicans know their propaganda worked, at least for a while. It's precisely why, now that the law is coming down on Trump, they've launched a full-on blitz against DOJ and any other agents of accountability in sight.
Censuring leaders of Trump's impeachment? Check. Moving to actually expunge impeachment? Check. Pretending tax and gun violations by Hunter Biden deserve the exact same charges as mishandling dozens of national security secrets, obstruction and false statements? Sure. Pledging to impeach Joe Biden? Definitely, though for exactly what, no one knows. Attacks on Jack Smith and his family? You betcha. All this week.
Trumpist Republicans helped stave off accountability for Trump's attempted coup for more than a year. Now, potential indictments are still outstanding. Potential jurors are watching. The MAGA GOP are trying their hardest to further intimidate DOJ, or at least lay the political groundwork for corrupt pardons or interference later.
Speaking of intimidation: Greg Jacobs, Pence's former counsel, testified at Eastman's disciplinary hearing this week about how he was getting a coffee in the Capitol on Jan. 6 when he heard the smash of a nearby window. It was Proud Boy Dominic "Spazzo" Pezzola breaking through with that stolen police shield. Jacobs, shaken, was quickly ushered with others onto the Senate floor by security personnel who said it was the only way to guarantee their safety.
Jacobs says that was the moment he fired off a now-famous email unearthed by the Jan. 6 committee. It was to John Eastman. "Thanks to your bullshit we are now under siege," he wrote.
Imagine the irony if Eastman's bullshit winds up being the little thing that convinced the Justice Department to stop being intimidated by the people who are still trying to steal an election.
Jack Smith has the ball rolling. Sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote!
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario