John Eastman on the 2020 election and allegations of fraud
John Eastman – where do I begin? Here are his sterling credentials:
Eastman is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public-interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He is a former professor and former dean at Chapman University School of Law. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for California’s 34th congressional district in 1990, and for California Attorney General in 2010. He is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
And yet Eastman has been recommended for disbarment in California, and is under indictment as a co-conspirator in the Jack Smith “2020 election subversion” case. In other words, he is under indictment for giving legal advice consistent with an arguable legal theory that the left doesn’t like – that is, they don’t like it when Republicans are espousing it for the benefit of a Republican; if it was a Democrat arguing for it and if it was to the benefit of Democrats, then it would be A-okay with them.
The indictment of Eastman is part of “Project 65,” a campaign by the left to go after lawyers who advise or help Trump. I’ve written about the project before, here as well as here.
Eastman has written what is perhaps the best summary of the election and voting irregularities and the evidence that fraud was certainly possible and even probable in that election, as well as of the unconstitutional ways in which the left engineered the voting regulation changes in many states by taking the teeth out of things such as signature verification. His article is also a summary of the legal challenges that failed, and why they failed.
You can find Eastman’s article here. Although it’s very long, it’s excellent and deserves to be read in its entirety. But even if you read just a portion of it, it’s worth it. You might also want to consider sending a link to anyone you know who thinks all of these claims of fraud and/or possible fraud have been “debunked” and yet who might retain at least a smidgen of an open mind on the subject.
I knew prior to the election that the most important thing the left was doing was to jettison the previous rules that protected voting integrity. They did this under cover of COVID fear as well as accusations that the prior rules were somehow racist. Once that happened and the rules were changed – by hook or by crook – it opened up both an opportunity to cheat and presented an impediment to proving (ex post facto) that cheating had occurred. So we could never know what happened, but we certainly could know that cheating was highly possible and perhaps probable. Once the voting public realized that, whatever trust had previously remained in the validity of elections disappeared, and much of the nation became far more cynical and angry – and rightly so.
The indictment of a man such as Eastman is the sequel, and it’s a terrible one. It increases the perception that we have crossed the line into banana republic status and/or Soviet-style show trials.
Neo: thanks for devoting a post to Eastman’s extremely important piece. I think it’s actually a transcript of a presentation or “briefing” that he recently gave at the Gatestone Institute, complete with Q&A at the end.
Eastman has the receipts and can describe the mechanisms by which documented cases of election fraud or illegality were dismissed by the courts on narrow technical grounds–or simply dismissed on the “Nah, nothing to see here, move along” principle. Just one example:
“Of the cases that actually reached the merits — there were fewer than a dozen of them, if I recall correctly — Trump won three-fourths of them. You have never heard that in the “New York Times.” And the Courts simply refused to hear some clearly meritorious cases, such as one filed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The majority in that case simply noted that it did not see any need to hear the case, over a vigorous dissent that basically said, “Are you nuts? This was illegal, and we have a duty to hear the challenge.”
Two years later, that same Court took up the issues that had been presented to it in December 2020, and it held that what happened was illegal. But by then it was too late to do anything about it.”
That was the point. One quibble: I’d change “It [the indictment of Eastman] increases the perception that we have crossed the line into banana republic status and/or Soviet-style show trials” to “It confirms that we have crossed the line into banana republic status and/or Soviet-style show trials.”
Have only been voting since 2002, but even for someone who was uninterested in politics during those previous years I still remember hearing or reading about the Democrats cheating – back to JFK’s election in 1960.
That’s like 42 years this non-political person had been hearing about Democrats cheating in elections, and apparently the Republicans still haven’t figured out how to stop it in 2024!?!
Heck, Trump was President of the United States of America in 2020 and he apparently couldn’t stop the Democrats from cheating (NOTE: but has said he could stop the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours!?!?!?!?).
Sorry if that sounded harsh and w/o any solutions…
This is one of the most insidious of many indictments of just straight-arrow patriots by lawfare. So easy to use so overwhelmingly destructive to the victims. The other guy who really didn’t deserve any such treatment was General Flynn. Just the assault of these men really makes me angry.
It’s more than a perception.
1. The Left is out to punish and destroy any lawyer who helps Trump or has a different legal opinion than the Dems.
2. This sends a message that if Trump does win, don’t work for him as the Left will ruin you.
IrishOtter:
I agree that it’s more than a perception. But I wrote it that way because even a mere perception is dangerous and divisive, and valid. Whether the perception is correct regarding actual fraud is unprovable, because of the voting rules changes. But it doesn’t matter because the perception is fully justified.
neo:
No worries.
I literally cried when I read Eastman’s article. We are so screwed. This is not going to be repaired. Ever.
In November, we shall learn whether America has truly crossed the line into banana republic status and Soviet-style show trials.
If the democrats ‘win’ in November, the only remaining means for redress of grievance will be “politics by other means”. As our only remaining choice will be a stark one; to either crouch down and lick the hands which promise to feed us, in hopes that our chains will not be too burdensome or to water the Tree of Liberty with our blood. If we choose the former, we will deserve our fate.
A dark age is descending. The Benedictine Option beckons. I wonder if the Albertian Order of Leibowitz is accepting new members?
I try to retain some shred of optimism about our political future because the alternative ensures defeat and is too depressing. I’ve become much more involved in local politics recently even though I don’t like it much. I feel I have to try to at least do something instead of complaining.
But in my heart I feel the moment the courts decided not to look too deeply into election fraud and most Republicans refused to acknowledge that the 2020 election was stolen, our Republic as we knew it ended. The Trump show trials are just the next logical step into banana republic territory. We have gone off the cliff like the hapless Wile E. Coyote and are running on air before the inevitable plummet into God knows what.
Meanwhile, Texas has added 1.8 million mystery voters since the 2016 election.
Can we say “ballot dump”? If they flip Texas, it’ll be something to see.
That’s like 42 years this non-political person had been hearing about Democrats cheating in elections, and apparently the Republicans still haven’t figured out how to stop it in 2024!?!
Their cheating did not seem significant in national elections after 1960 or 64, from what I have been led to believe. The Republicans of 2020 don’t remember 1960 for the most part.
Heck, Trump was President of the United States of America in 2020 and he apparently couldn’t stop the Democrats from cheating (NOTE: but has said he could stop the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours!?!?!?!?).
POTUS has a lot of power dealing with foreign entities. Not so much in domestic affairs.
The Constitution leaves elections to the states. The election meddling mostly happened with courts, secretaries of states, etc., typically unconstitutionally altering election law without the state legislatures. Trump’s only actions here would be via courts (which opposed him) and perhaps DOJ investigations (but DOJ was not going to help him).
Democrat voter fraud is built into the party’s genes. You’re a Democrat, you cheat.
Territorial Enterprise, October 21-24, 1865
[portion of letter from San Francisco written October 19, 1865]
BOB ROACH’S PLAN FOR CIRCUMVENTING A DEMOCRAT
Where did all these Democrats come from? They grow thicker and thicker and act more and more outrageously at each successive election. Now yesterday they had the presumption to elect S. H. Dwinelle to the Judgeship of the Fifteenth District Court, and not content with this, they were depraved enough to elect four out of the six Justices of the Peace! Oh, ‘Enery Villiam, where is thy blush! Oh, Timothy Hooligan, where is thy shame! It’s out. Democrats haven’t got any. But Union men staid away from the election – they either did that or else they came to the election and voted Democratic tickets – I think it was the latter, though the Flag will doubtless say it was the former. But these Democrats didn’t stay away – you never catch a Democrat staying away from an election. The grand end and aim of his life is to vote or be voted for, and he accommodates to circumstances and does one just as cheerfully as he does the other. The Democracy of America left their native wilds in England and Connaught to come here and vote – and when a man, and especially a foreigner, who don’t have any voting at home any more than an Arkansas man has ice-cream for dinner, comes three or four thousand miles to luxuriate in occasional voting, he isn’t going to stay away from an election any more than the Arkansas man will leave the hotel table in “Orleans” until he has destroyed most of the ice cream. The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part of Democrats for voting, was Robert Roach, carpenter of the steamer Aleck Scott, “plying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back,” as her advertisement sometimes read. The Democrats generally came up as deck passengers from New Or leans, and the yellow fever used to snatch them right and left – eight or nine a day for the first six or eight hundred miles; consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to “plant” every time the boat landed to wood – “plant” was Roach’s word. One day as Roach was superintending a burial the Captain came up and said:
“God bless my soul, Roach, what do you mean by shoving a corpse into a hole in the hill-side in this barbarous way, face down and its feet sticking out?”
“I always plant them foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because, damn their souls, if you plant ’em any other way they’ll dig out and vote the first time there’s an election – but look at that fellow, now – you put ’em in head first and face down and the more they dig the deeper they’ll go into the hill.”
In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to superintend our cemeteries, enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire ticket. It begins to look that way.
reprinted in The Works of Mark Twain; Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 2 1864-1865, (Univ. of California Press, 1981), pp. 313-14.
Wasn’t there a commenter here, a while back, arguing that Eastman deserves all that’s been thrown at him?
Alferd Packer knew another way to circumvent Democrats, but it wasn’t entirely successful. As the judge allegedly told him at sentencing:
“Stand up, you voracious, man-eating son of a bitch, stand up! There was seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and you up and ate five of them. God damn you, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, as a warning against reducing the Democratic population of our state!”
I read the PA Supreme Court decision and the cert brief to SCOTUS. One of the worst decisions ever. Elected Dem judges abandoning the Rule of Law.
Pessimism, indeed. I grew up on the judgment of the only convicted cannibal in the US — Alfred Packe, Thanks.. And thanks to Paul in Boston for the Twain piece.
On the demise of the Great American experiment in self-government, I quote the opening paragraphs of the late Angelo Codevilla, retired Boston University poli sci prof, in late January of 2021, from American Greatness.com:
Texas v. Pennsylvania et al. did not deny setting rules for the 2020 election contrary to the Constitution. On December 10, 2020, the Supreme Court discounted that. By refusing to interfere as America’s ruling oligarchy serves itself, the court archived what remained of the American republic’s system of equal justice. That much is clear.
“In 2021, the laws, customs, and habits of the heart that had defined the American republic since the 18th century are things of the past. Americans’ movements and interactions are under strictures for which no one ever voted. Government disarticulated society by penalizing ordinary social intercourse and precluding the rise of spontaneous opinion therefrom. Together with corporate America, it smothers minds through the mass and social media with relentless, pervasive, identical, and ever-evolving directives. In that way, these oligarchs have proclaimed themselves the arbiters of truth, entitled and obliged to censor whoever disagrees with them as systemically racist, adepts of conspiracy theories.
“Corporations, and the government itself, require employees to attend meetings personally to acknowledge their guilt. They solicit mutual accusations. While violent felons are released from prison, anyone may be fired or otherwise have his life wrecked for questioning government/corporate sentiment. Today’s rulers don’t try to convince. They demand obedience, and they punish.
“Russians and East Germans under Communists Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker in the 1970s lived under less ruling class pressure than do today’s Americans. And their rulers were smart enough not to insult them, their country, or their race.
“In 2015, Americans could still believe they lived in a republic, in which life’s rules flow from the people through their representatives. In 2021, a class of rulers draws their right to rule from self-declared experts’ claims of infallibility that dwarf baroque kings’ pretensions.
“In that self-referential sense, the United States of America is now a classic oligarchy.”
https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/19/clarity-in-trumps-wake/
WHAT, if anything, in these words has changed in the three years since?
Earth Day. And will we get an echo of the pandemic times, as Fox Business, NBCnews, and Bloomberg all report on the pressure on Biden to declare a state of national emergency over The Climate Crisis, and thus invoke dictatorial powers over us all?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/fascism-joe-biden-considering-declaring-national-climate-emergency/
YES. It can get worse.
@ T J:
It was my impression that SCOTUS dismissed the Texas case for lack of standing: I.e. no state has the right to tell any other state how its electoral votes shall be counted.
It appears in Pa street ballot stuffing boxes are here to stay, no surprise as Democrats run the state now. Have yet to see a explanation how the 2020 election in Pa had negative numbers, taking off totals often. And additions often used exactly percentages or totals added on hour after hour.
For all the Marxist claims ( Sundowner uses it often) that every court made judgment against fraud, none ever opened a case, all were brushed aside.
By not opening any of the 2020 arguments we are going to get them all, maybe something new but it’s going to all come back in November and December like a bad dream.
And right on cue….
“Democratic governors veto GOP election integrity bills despite provable election fraud issues;
“Many of the bills were passed by GOP-led state legislatures to remedy election fraud issues.”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/democratic-governors-veto-gop-election-integrity-bills-despite-election
Their sense of timing is impeccable.
Imagine that you look at the vote count in the bluest of the bluest voting districts. NYC’s Manhattan would be one good example. More precisely, you examine in these voting districts what percentage of the vote went to Trump in the last election.
Obviously, as one would expect, it would be a very very small percentage.
Let’s assume in the last election Trump got 10% to 15% of the vote, on average, when looking at the vote count in, say, the 10 bluest of the bluest voting districts across the USA.
Now look at the “overnight” vote count in those states that “suspended” voting over night. If the overnight vote count showed (even though it was suspended) that Trump received, say, 5% of the vote, on average, this would manifestly demonstrate that something fishy had occurred.
Anyway, just a thought experiment from an election denier.
No need to mention those voting districts that counted more votes than there were registered voters; you just don’t understand the “new math.”
Ballot drop boxes?
Ballots are flammable.
Do the math.