Trump’s GOP has no allegiance to the rule of law
“Trump was told the plan to block the election was illegal but tried it anyway, and the lawyer who suggested it asked for a pardon after the riot.” That headline from CNN’s landing page neatly summarized Thursday’s third hearing of the House Jan. 6 investigating committee.*
Coup architect John Eastman knew that the two options he was recommending to then-president Donald Trump— for Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the electoral votes of several states and unilaterally declare Trump the victor, or to send the slates of electors back to several states for reevaluation — violated several provisions of the Electoral Count Act yet recommended them anyway. He considered the act unconstitutional, testified Greg Jacob, the top White House lawyer to former Vice President Mike Pence.
That view would likely lose in court, Jacob argued. Eastman replied that the [Supreme] court would not get involved in such a political dispute, clearing the way for the Trump team to violate the Act with impunity. Asked if he ever admitted in front of then President Trump that his plan would violate the Electoral Count Act, Jacob testified that Eastman did so on January 4, two days before the attack on the Capitol.
In later further testimony, Jacob said Eastman believed, best case, he would lose in the Supreme Court seven to two before conceding it would likely by nine to zero. Who did Eastman think were the two?
Trump went ahead with his pressure campaign against Pence. When on Jan. 6 Pence did not comply, Trump issued a tweet that incensed the angry mob and put Pence’s and others’ lives at risk. Rioters read the tweet aloud and vowed revenge.
A confidential informant told the FBI that had the Proud Boys captured Pence they would have killed him, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told the hearing.
Eastman was so dogged in his pursuit of his plan to keep Donald Trump in office past Jan. 20, 2021 that he called White House attorney Eric Herschmann the day after the riot to pursue it further. Herschmann thought hes was out of his mind and advised, “Get a great f’ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re gonna need it.”
Thursday’s testimony verified the soundness of that advice.
Subsequent to the failed coup, Eastman emailed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to ask that he be placed on a list of Trump pardons. He never received one. In testimony before committee investigators, Eastman invoked his 5th Amendment rights one hundred times.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked a key quesation that Thursday’s testimony did not answer directly.
“Constitutional mischief,” Judge J. Michael Luttig said of the theory that Pence could reject the electoral vote count in the 2020 election. The respected conservative jurist (retired) testified at the start of the hearing and more pointedly at the end.
“Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said. “To this very day, the former president, his allies and supporters, pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor … were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election.”
Also Thursday, a court filing in the criminal case against Proud Boys Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola revealed that the Department of Justice sent a letter to the committee on June 15 requesting transcripts of all its witness interviews. The materials are “potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations” and “likely relevant to relevent to specific prosecutions” underway. The materials are important for defense lawyers as well.
Future hearings will explore Trump’s actions during the riot itself. With any luck, Eastman is not the only White House insider who will need “a great f’ing criminal defense lawyer.”
* Press critic Dan Froomkin found a few others infuriatingly lame as well as a few ledes.
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