He had to know it would happen
This exclusive by Rolling Stone has Trump and his cronies abandoning the lawyer who gave them the legal rationale they were looking for to stage a coup. It figures. But I have to wonder if that’s such a smart thing to do. Eastman knows things ….
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.
Behind closed doors, Trump will occasionally ask questions about Eastman’s fortunes, including bluntly inquiring: “Is [John] going to jail?” according to a source who has heard the former president say this. But publicly, Trump has stayed silent. Over the past several months, Trump has been strongly advised by lawyers and several associates not to openly discuss Eastman or his work — and to personally avoid the man altogether, according to three sources familiar with the matter. At this time, Trump, his legal advisers, and various political counselors would prefer to cut ties with Eastman and keep their distance, in a perhaps vain attempt to build a firewall between the lawyer who enthusiastically pitched strategies for delegitimizing the 2020 election outcome and the ex-president who repeatedly sought his help.
[…]
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.
“How many lawyers did Trump have? He had several…And John Eastman has turned into the fall guy,” Mark Levin, a Fox News and radio host, said on-air last week. “He’s a lawyer, he’s an advocate for the [former] president. Whether you agree with his legal judgment, his legal findings, or not, it’s what lawyers do.” (According to a New York Times report last year, Levin is indirectly responsible for landing Eastman in then-President Trump’s inner orbit — simply due to the fact that Trump had seen the attorney on a 2019 episode of Levin’s program.)
On Trump’s social media forum, Truth Social, the former president has remained silent about Eastman — even as he’s come to the defense of other aides and supporters now under scrutiny for their efforts to wage a coup against Joe Biden. In fact, Trump has “Truthed” about Elon Musk’s spat with Twitter, the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial, and the PGA tour — but hasn’t posted even a fleeting defense of Eastman.
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.
Despite multiple stories about the January 6th committee’s interest in Eastman, however, Trump’s thumbs have remained unmoved on the subject of his onetime attorney’s fate. On Truth Social, where the former game-show host has offered a running commentary on the committee’s hearings, Trump has not once mentioned Eastman who, as president, he had once hailed on Twitter as a “Brilliant Constitutional Lawyer.”
Trump aides have remained similarly quiet on the subject of Eastman. His spokeswoman Liz Harrington has not mentioned the campaign lawyer since a tweet on January 6, when she hailed his speech at the rally on the mall “explain the rigged voting machine system that corrupt politicians kept in place for the GA runoffs.”
Maybe Eastman will go down with the ship. He wouldn’t be the first. And Trump would surely pardon him if he steals 2024. (He’d owe him for plotting the dry run…) But if he doesn’t want to lose everything he may just decide that Donald Trump isn’t worth it. He is the most disloyal man on the planet.