Trump's Team Setting Up Eastman to Take Blame for Jan. 6
With the Justice Department and Jan. 6 committee taking a close look at Donald Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he and his cronies could certainly use a fall guy, and it looks like theyve 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 lawyers work has brought Trump and his inner sanctum, including during the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill.
Furthermore, to those whove 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 Trumps election defeat.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jan6-eastman-trump-committee-investigation-pardons-1371419/