With the growing sh%$ storm over various attempts by Trump and his Evil Minions™ attempts to corruptly subvert thge 2020 election making waves, Trump is doing what he always does, throwing his lackeys to the wolves, in this case it is lawyer (though hopefully not for long) John Eastman.
In a perfect world, Eastman would start showing investigators where the bodies are buried for both Trump and the Thomases, but I am not holding my breath:
With the Justice Department and Jan. 6 committee taking a close look at Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he and his cronies could certainly use a fall guy, and it looks like they’ve found their patsy: right-wing lawyer John Eastman.
Eastman worked for Trump as the attorney devised legal strategies to overturn the election to keep the outgoing president in power. But, in recent weeks, Trump has confided to those close to him that he sees no reason to publicly defend Eastman, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president is also deeply annoyed with Eastman and all the negative “attention” and media coverage that the lawyer’s work has brought Trump and his inner sanctum, including during the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill.
Furthermore, to those who’ve spoken Trump about Eastman in recent months, the ex-president has repeated an excuse he often uses when backed into a corner, as investigators confront him with an associates’ misdeeds: He has privately insisted he “hardly” or “barely” knows Eastman, despite the fact that he counseled Trump on taking a string of extra-legal measures in a bid to stay in power and wrote the so-called “coup memo,” which laid out the facsimile of a legal argument for reversing Trump’s election defeat.
………
Indeed, the infamously garrulous Trump has publicly kept his mouth shut about Eastman, a lawyer whose work became integral to the scandalous efforts to nullify President Biden’s 2020 victory. (Trump even considered Eastman as counsel for his post-insurrection impeachment.)
Nowadays, in the top ranks of MAGAland, there’s a clear attitude towards Eastman (“Johnny,” as some Trump advisers derisively call him): He might be going down. So be it, as long as he doesn’t take anyone else down with him.
………
Eastman has become an increasing focus for the January 6th committee for his role in spearheading many of the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election. Exhibits posted by the committee last week included excerpts of a deposition by Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann in which he described a heated confrontation with Eastman the day after the insurrection where he told Eastman to “get a great fucking criminal defense lawyer” because “you’re going to need it.”
Shortly afterward, Eastman emailed fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to say: “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”
“Any time you give legal advice and then feel compelled to ask for a pardon, it probably wasn’t good legal advice,” says Steven Groves, formerly a lawyer and then a spokesman in Trump’s White House.
Indeed.
……….
Eastman, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas turned conservative constitutional law professor, was first welcomed into Trump’s orbit during the penultimate year of Trump’s term in office. Trump, enamored of Eastman’s skepticism of the birthright citizenship afforded by the constitution, increasingly came to rely on the attorney’s crackpot views of election law as the the odds of overturning Biden’s 2020 election victory grew longer. On behalf of Trump, Eastman authored briefs for the Supreme Court to intervene in the election in Trump’s favor — both ultimately discarded by the justices.
………
But the idea that Eastman is becoming something of a fall guy for Trump and various Republicans’ efforts in 2020 and early 2021 is now so prevalent in influential conservative circles that it’s now being acknowledged by some of the former president’s favorite right-wing media stars.
………
When the FBI arrested Trump’s former trade advisor Peter Navarro for defying a subpoena from the committee, the former president thundered with outrage that “our great trade genius, Professor Peter Navarro, was just handcuffed, shackled, and put in jail.” Ginni Thomas, whose efforts to overthrow Biden’s victory in Arizona, received similar encouragement from Trump when The Washington Post uncovered her emails urging legislators there to ignore the voters’ will and proclaim Trump the state’s victor. Thomas, Trump wrote after the Post story, is a “Great American Patriot, the wonderful wife of Justice Clarence Thomas” who “fought for Voter Integrity in the Great State of Arizona.”
On Trump’s personal website, where the former president hosted written statements after his ouster from Twitter and before the launch of Truth Social, he’s been similarly mum. Eastman’s name appears on the site only twice, in hosted copies of the Supreme Court election briefs he authored in 2020.
Does it make me a bad person to feel nothing but amusement about all of this.
OK, I'm feeling a little bit disappointed that Donnie Two Scoops isn't in the same position, but nothing is going to happen to him, because of the norms fairy.
0 comments :
Post a Comment