While rioters at the U.S. Capitol called for then Vice President Mike Pence to be executed on Jan. 6, an attorney for then President Donald Trump sent an email blaming Pence for the attack.
“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” attorney Jon C. Eastman wrote to Pence aide Greg Jacob. He was referring to unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud frequently mentioned by Trump to this day.
Jacob included the email in the draft of a never-published opinion article obtained by The Washington Post. In the draft, he said Eastman “displayed a shocking lack of awareness of how those practical implications were playing out in real time.”
When Eastman sent the email to Jacob, Pence was presiding in the Senate as members were preparing to certify votes for current President Joe Biden.
Eastman, 61, is a veteran conservative legal activist who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A longtime member of the Federalist Society, Eastman spent much of his legal career fighting same-sex marriage.
He confirmed that he sent that email and others to Jacob in an interview with the Washington Post. However, Eastman denied that he was blaming Pence for the violent insurrection.
The attorney also defended giving Pence legal advice to halt Congress’ certification of Biden’s votes, claiming again that there was voter fraud, despite the lack of evidence. Jacob called Eastman’s input “a barrage of bankrupt legal theories.”
Eastman said he sent the email as a response to one from Jacob that said his “bull----” legal advice was why Pence’s team was “under siege,” and that Jacob had later apologized. An anonymous person cited by The Washington Post said Jacob apologized for the profanity but still thought the advice was unusable.
According to the outlet, multiple legal scholars have said Eastman’s proposal that Pence stall vote certification on Jan. 6 so Republican state lawmakers could investigate the unfounded fraud claims would not have worked because Pence was not authorized to do such a thing.
Jacob also wrote in his draft article that Eastman and attorney Rudolph Giuliani were part of a “cadre of outside lawyers” who had “spun a web of lies and disinformation” in an attempt to pressure Pence to betray his oath of office and the Constitution.
“Now that the moment of immediate crisis has passed, the legal profession should dispassionately examine whether the attorneys involved should be disciplined for using their credentials to sell a stream of snake oil to the most powerful office in the world, wrapped in the guise of a lawyer’s advice,” he wrote.
Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, said Jacob had a right to his opinion. “This is an opinion piece, and not surprisingly, he agrees with his own opinion,” Costello said.
Jacob also said in the draft that both Trump and the supporters who attended a rally shortly before the Capitol riots were not adequately informed by lawyers like Eastman that the legal theory they were promoting had significant “drawbacks and limitations.”
On the evening of Jan. 6, Eastman was still contacting Jacob about potentially not certifying the votes.
“My point was they had already violated the electoral count act by allowing debate to extend past the allotted two hours, and by not reconvening ‘immediately’ in joint session after the vote in the objection,” Eastman told The Post. “It seemed that had already set the precedent that it was not an impediment.”
Other documents related to Eastman have been subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, said The Washington Post. These include two legal memos regarding how Republicans could prevent Biden from becoming president.
The memos were first reported in the book “Peril” by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
One of Eastman’s arguments was that the 1887 Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional, and that the vice president has power under the 12th Amendment to decide whether electoral votes are valid. Another option was for Pence to reject electoral votes for Biden from states where Republicans were claiming fraud, making Trump the winner.
Even Eastman has said that option is “crazy” and has tried to disown it, said The Washington Post.
Eastman reportedly discussed options for Pence in person Jan.
4. during a meeting in the Oval Office with Trump, Pence, Jacob and Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short. Pence’s advisors said they had not met him before January.
In December, Giuliani was given a seven-page paper by Eastman that featured theories about voter fraud published by the right-wing blog the Gateway Pundit and an anonymous Twitter user named “DuckDiver19”, according to The Washington Post.
Eastman met again with Pence and Jacob Jan. 5, and two unnamed sources said the attorney urged Pence to reject Biden electors. Eastman said this is false.
“I did not push for electors to be thrown out, but for the disputes to be referred to state legislatures, as had been requested by key legislators in several states, for assessment of the impact of the acknowledged illegality in the conduct of the election,” he said.
A bipartisan group of former government officials and legal figures, including two former federal judges, has also asked the California bar association to investigate Eastman’s conduct.
The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank where Eastman serves as a senior fellow, has defended him from criticism over his role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. However, the University of Colorado, where he worked as a visiting professor, has stripped some of his duties and he agreed to resign from a position at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.
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