John Eastman isn't going away quietly
John Eastman isnt going away quietly.
Today, Eastman is notorious as the author of a legal memo asserting that Vice President Mike Pence could delay election results from seven states, potentially creating a pathway for President Donald Trump to win the 2020 election. But when I first met him, in 2010, he didnt seem like a budding seditionist. Back then, the former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was running an uphill campaign to become Californias attorney general and came across as just your average eccentric law professor.
It was a mistake to write off Eastman then. And tempting as it is to dismiss him as a threat neutralized with Trumps removal from office, it would be an even bigger error to write him off now.
Because Eastman, 61, has plans. Ever since Bob Woodward and Robert Costas new book, Peril, surfaced his election memorandum, his legal reasoning has been widely criticized. But it isnt stopping him from using the law to advance his agenda. Along with his former Chapman University law-school colleague Anthony Caso, Eastman has founded a new firm in Orange County called the Constitutional Counsel Group. (Eastman and the Chapman University law school, where he was once dean, parted ways after Jan. 6.)
Eastman says he expects to be the tip of the spear on litigation over the separation of powers, using lawsuits to challenge executive-branch overreach such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration directives related to covid-19. The executive branch, his theory goes, is acting in areas that it cant, absent laws passed by Congress. Its an interesting take from the guy who suggested the vice president had authority to block Congress from certifying official state vote tallies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/18/john-eastman-plans-2020-election/
Kid Berwyn
(14,876 posts)Hope his reputation precedes him.
ShazamIam
(2,570 posts)as a nation and the Constitution that binds it. They want a return to the old European, pre-1776 rebellion against inherited wealth and power for only the few.
Skittles
(153,150 posts)fuck them
LetMyPeopleVote
(145,130 posts)This amuses me. Claremont was uninvited to an event due to Eastman https://www.rawstory.com/john-eastman-2655316992/
At issue, Field writes, is a dispute between the Claremont Institute and American Political Science Association, which chose to cancel appearances by Eastman at their conference over fears he might draw protesters and disrupt the proceedings.
That explanation didn't mollify Ryan Williams, president of the think tank, who issued a statement reading, in part: "Last Friday [i.e., September 24], I made the decision to withdraw the Claremont Institute's program [from the annual APSA meeting] this year after APSA, without explanation, moved all 10 of our panels (and our reception) to a "virtual" format. Though APSA Executive Director Steven Smith would never confirm directly, it became clear that Claremont Institute Senior Fellow John Eastman's independent role as President Donald Trump's attorney during challenges to the 2020 election was at issue."
He then added, "When we inquired for specifics, so that we might assess the safety of the rest of Claremont staff and participants in Seattle and prepare accordingly, we got no response. . . . APSA decided to cave to the mob this time, betraying a core principle of academic freedom and republicanism: reasoned debate about even the most controversial political and intellectual topics."