Eastman Insists He Def Doesn’t Believe Memo’s ‘Crazy’ Plots To Steal Election Were Real | Talking Points Memo

TPM Article Topics
#258

OT:

I am watching “Making of the Mob” on AMC series. Pretty dang good, but we get to the point where Thomas Dewey finally is able to get a guilty verdict on Lucky Luciano. And they cut to clips of No Colludy Rudy giving some expert commentary on what just happened when Dewey was questioning Lucky: “so we are to believe that ALL 60 of the witnesses called here were ALL liars, and only YOU, Charles “Lucky” Luciano is telling the truth?”

And the clip with Rudy comes in as he says “Most people don’t understand that when you lie so much, and your whole life is built on lies, what can happen when a really good, tough cross-examiner can tear you all to shreds”

I hadn’t seen him pop-up in any of the earlier episodes but I can say it sort-of ruined, for me, a pretty good series so far. Now I fear it will keep working into more recent history and there will be a whole episode of Ghoulsie’s era as prosecutor and those show producers/writers are going to want a serious do-over.

2 Likes
#259

I don’t know if this has been posted here before. If it has, sorry for the repeat. We know Eastman did a “tell-all” to the NR. Seems like there was another one, a 1-hour podcast . Like @txlawyer says: Eastman should really STFU:

4 Likes
#260

He cannot claim privilege when the Jan 6 committee sends him an invite.

6 Likes
#261

Yup, Marcy Wheeler does it again. That I where saw that PodCast. :pray:t3:

1 Like
#262

Like so many of his generation, Eastman seems to have accepted Limbaugh and Fox News at face value. His brain has been fully melted.

5 Likes
#263

The privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney. Trump could still try to claim it, though Eastman’s out-of-court statements could still be placed in the record even if he succeeded in the attempt. And there is, technically, no testimonial privilege for attorney-client communications in a congressional proceeding.

6 Likes
#264

“I was not at the bank at 8:32am” (Nobody asked you that)

3 Likes
#265

I believe that syndrome is medically referred to as “mush for brains.” LOL

2 Likes
#266

Some people will do anything to become Dean of Law at Trump University of the Kakistocracy.

2 Likes
#267

The lawyer also claimed he disagreed with the memos’ assertion that the vice president is the “ultimate arbiter” of which electoral votes could be counted. Eastman said that argument “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense” given that “we know the vice president is very likely to be one of the contenders for the office that he’ll be deciding.”

I went and watched the video of John Eastman’s speech on January 6.

He says “all we are demanding of Vice President Mike Pence is that this afternoon at 1:00 o’clock he let the legislatures of the states look into this so we get to the bottom of it *** it has to be done.”

This came after he spun a false yarn about how the Dominion voting machines in Georgia kept a secret folder full of votes to be added to the totals at the end once they knew how many they needed for Biden (and Warnock and Ossoff) needed to win.

These are not the words of someone who thought the ideas in his own memo were “crazy.”

The guy should be disbarred. And if Dominion hasn’t sued him yet, they should.

9 Likes
#268

Because he has a fool for a client?

5 Likes
#269

No spoilers but I believe that is the only appearance of Ghoulie.

1 Like
#270

Also, most of the cronies of the disgraced ex-president seem to be banking on his re-election to the office in 2024. Back-pedaling now, in the (awful) scenario of such an event, will be viewed by the disgraced ex-president as “disloyalty”, and he’s really not very happy with disloyal people. So Eastman is looking stupid to the sane majority while also alienating the brass idol of the insane minority, who is known to be vengeful and vindictive. Really not a smart situation…

5 Likes
#271

Jeebus what are we supposed to do in a country where the top official, the president, is strong-arming every official he can get on the phone and on this call 300 of them? I am still unsure where criminality begins, but how CAN this be legal? When HE is on the ballot, for him to be even talking to these people seems like election tampering. When he is actually ON THE CALL and exhorting them to flip or invalidate the results, can’t that be considered cut-n-dried violation of State and Federal election law? No matter how much the Rs try to shield and insulate Chump by saying it was Giuliani, it was Eastman, it was Bannon, it was the Proud Boys, it was the Stop The Steal organizers…isn’t this a smoking gun directly in Chump’s hand?

ETA:
The Political Coercion Act 18 USC 610

" It shall be unlawful for any person to intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce, any employee of the Federal Government as defined in section 7322(1) of title 5, United States Code , to engage in, or not to engage in, any political activity, including, but not limited to, voting or refusing to vote for any candidate or measure in any election, making or refusing to make any political contribution, or working or refusing to work on behalf of any candidate. Any person who violates this section shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

I understand that statute appears to be aimed at pressuring Fed Govt. but I would think state’s have similar laws. And in this case these are Fed Govt. officials DOING the pressuring. Along with the GA calls to Raffensperger, the GA US Attorney, etc. each of these states like MI, PA, WI adds up to a trampling of this statute.

3 Likes
#272

So my point is…why are we so laser-focused on being able to find Chump guilty of directly inciting and plotting the insurrection/coup (which he does have some insulation…enough people falling on their swords and no recording of Chump saying “go take over the Capitol and stop the election by force”), when we have him dead to rights trying to pressure multiple states and 100s of elected officials and election officials?

3 Likes
#273

Ummm…ok…doesn’t believe “crazy plot” how about the crazy plan he hatched to do it?

1 Like
#274

Is it just me or are there plenty of people under the Trump disaster who did things " that they didn’t want to do"…unprincipled hacks or compliant little yes men…either way…human trash…

2 Likes
#275

Indeed. What I was interested in was Trump Inc’s pattern of putting someone up to writing a memo.sometimes on a complete pretext and then.pretending they had been relying in the writer’s expertise all along.

On.this instance Eastman.may have gern prompted to right and Trump was hiding behind Eastman’s purported scholarly credentials but it is also.clear that Eastman was all in on the idea of having people act on the basis of his memo.

Another Trump.ploy is to get people to.do things by relieving them of the responsibility for the grand scheme as in “Mike. Mike, Mike no one is asking you to overthrow the election. We just want you.to give the states a chance to weigh in on the validity of their results.” Ignoring the fact that the states had made that determination when they decided to send the results along in the first place.

The argument is that it is not treason to lay the first brick in the wall of treason.

3 Likes
#276

Way off base. This is not an ordinary matter. It’s not bad lawyering that would result in action that could be resolved later by the courts. It’s our democracy, dammit.

#277

Maybe we caught a break. The coup conspiracy failed because of bad lawyering.

Comments are now Members-Only
Join the discussion Free options available