The Dishonest Defense Of Donald Trump
The animated defenses of Donald Trump since the first Jan 6th committee hearing were not unexpected but still deeply troubling.
One thing that leaps off the page, so to speak, is that many falling all over themselves to defend Trump today have been claiming for months and even years that they are not Trump followers or fans. We can correctly interpret that as meaning 'only when they have to be'. Of course when they have to be covers a lot of ground.
The main line of attack seems to be that the Jan 6th committee is partisan, as if that invalidates the mountain of evidence that has been collected against Trump.
Here is a recent article that makes the point that Eastman proposed an illegal plan that Trump went along with.
This sort of reality check is an anathema to the Trump defenders of today both on Newstalkers and beyond.
secondnexus.com /trump-eastman-pence-illegal-conspiracy-2657457731
It Doesn’t Matter What White House Conspirators Believed About Election Fraud–They’re Still Guilty
Jay Kuo 12-15 minutes 6/4/2022
On March 28, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter issued an extraordinary ruling , finding that it was “likely” that Donald Trump and John Eastman committed at least two federal crimes in their attempts to hold onto the White House:
- corruptly obstructing Congress in its electoral vote count, and
- entering into a conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering with the election process.
Both carry heavy penalties, but both are also tricky to prove because the guilty state of mind of the defendants is an element of each crime.
In arguing against guilty intent, Eastman has sought to demonstrate that he and the former president had good faith reasons to believe that the election was tainted with fraud, and therefore what they did by pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results on January 6 was not “corrupt” but somehow in service of the Republic.
This tactic has always bothered me. But after reviewing the parties’ latest filings before Judge Carter, two things clicked.
Their Claims of Election Fraud Are a Red Herring
First, it doesn’t matter if Trump or Eastman genuinely thought there was election fraud despite all the evidence to the contrary. They’re still guilty of the crimes cited by Judge Carter because it was their intent to illegally obstruct and interfere with the electoral counting. Why they chose to do it isn’t relevant to these crimes.
In fact, these election fraud claims can be a huge distraction and can muddy the waters considerably. This is because disproving them is to prove a negative, namely that election fraud did not happen.
Trump and Eastman can point to dozens of already debunked claims of alleged fraud, wasting everyone’s time (and the jury’s and public’s attention spans) while these are relitigated and methodically disposed of one by one. But this is precisely how conspiracies gain traction: string together enough baseless claims, and it starts to feel like something is amiss.
We can’t win factual arguments against conspiracy theorists because facts aren’t persuasive against feelings.
The better approach is to not wrestle this particular pig in the mud. Rather, we should point out that all their claims of fraud were settled and dismissed by the courts in over 60 lawsuits, and that what matters now is whether their actions to overturn the election were illegal even assuming they had a good faith belief in widespread election fraud.
The best way to understand this is to substitute something equally false and absurd for “election fraud.”
Let’s assume instead that Trump and Eastman genuinely believed that Joe Biden was a space alien in a human flesh suit. (This sadly would not be far off from some of the more extreme conspiracy theories out there.)
Let’s say that they set out to keep Joe Biden from becoming president because they honestly and genuinely didn’t want a space alien in the White House. While this might explain their behavior, it doesn’t make what they did any less illegal.
The only question before a jury (and the court of public opinion) should be whether Trump and Eastman knew their plot to overturn the election was an illegal one but they went ahead with it anyway, even if they actually thought Joe Biden was elected fraudulently or was a space alien in a human flesh suit.
The Evidence Shows They Knew Their Plot Was Illegal.
This gets to the second thing that clicked. How do we prove that John Eastman and Donald Trump knew that their scheme using Mike Pence was illegal?
Trump is notorious for not keeping notes or sending emails that might incriminate him, but John Eastman, thankfully, appears to have put all his thoughts down, apparently in the mistaken belief that they would never see the light of a courtroom because he’s an attorney and these are normally privileged. He didn’t count on the “crime-fraud” exception to the privilege undercutting him so decisively.
The infamous “ Eastman Memo ,” which is actually the culmination of weeks of strategizing among many Trump campaign attorneys, lays out the plan in stark and clear terms.
Importantly, this was this same plan that the White House was trying to execute—through high pressure meetings with Mike Pence and his staff in the days leading up to January 6 and even through dangerous coercion by Trump and eventually by the mob that attacked the Capitol—all the way up to the very moment Mike Pence actually returned to the floor, conducted the count, and declared Joe Biden the winner.
The Eastman plan required two critical components in order to work:
- a set of “alternate” slates of electors from seven swing states, and
- the cooperation of the presiding officer of the Senate, which meant Vice President Mike Pence or the Senate Pro Tempore, Chuck Grassley, if Mike Pence recused himself or was absent.
Under the plan, the presiding officer would point to “alternate” slates of electors as evidence that the swing states were disputed in order to justify throwing out or delaying the vote that day.
Eastman Knew the Alternate Electors Scheme Was Illegal
To fulfill the first part of the scheme, White House conspirators organized efforts to have “alternate electors” meet on December 14, 2020, the same day the real Electoral College members were gathered across the states, so they could cast “dueling” votes. That way, according to the Eastman plan, when Congress met on January 6 to count the electoral votes, the presiding officer could cite the “dueling” electors and either declare Trump the victor or postpone the count.
This scheme was proposed as early as November 18, 2020, when a member of the Trump legal team drafted a “President of the Senate” strategy that proposed Trump electors “cast their votes, and then send their votes to the President of the Senate in time to be opened on January 6.”
According to the Committee’s most recent filing, Eastman sent that strategy memo to Rudy Giuliani on December 7, 2020. The fake electors, using near identical language in their “certifications,” then met on December 14, 2020 and forwarded their votes to Congress.
Here’s where the plan falls into illegal territory.
It turns out, Eastman knew and even admitted in a letter to a colleague dated December 19, 2020 that any “alternate” slates of electors from the swing states that didn’t have the legal and official backing of their state legislatures would be “dead on arrival in Congress.” Specifically, he was concerned the whole scheme would fail “unless those electors get a certification from their State Legislators.”
But just four days later, on December 23, 2020, Eastman decided that whether the alternate slates were legally backed by their state legislatures didn’t matter because they could still pull off their scheme using Pence. “[T]he fact that we have multiple slates of electors demonstrates the uncertainty of either. That should be enough,” he wrote in an email that day with Boris Epshteyn, a Trump campaign official.
As the January 6 Committee notes in a recent filing , Eastman also circulated his infamous soft coup memo that same day, declaring that “7 states ha[d] transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate” and urging the Vice President to disregard the Biden electors from those seven States, “gavel[ing] President Trump as re-elected” or “send[ing] the matter to the House” for resolution.
The teams’ proposal went forward, and the pressure campaign on Pence began, even though Eastman already knew and had admitted privately that the dueling slates would be illegal and DOA.
Further, even after the insurrection happened, as the January 6 Committee revealed in its most recent filing, Eastman again admitted in writing that he knew his alternate elector scheme was illegal.
He wrote an email to a member of the public named Valerie Moon on January 10, 2021 saying of the alternate slates that “they had no authority” because “[n]o legislature certified them.” In short, the entire conspiracy and scheme to overturn the election rested upon the recognition by Mike Pence of alternate slates of electors that Eastman already knew had no authority or validity whatsoever.
Eastman Knew that Having Pence Act Unilaterally Was Illegal
The other key part of the conspiracy—one that required Mike Pence to overstep his legal authority and simply declare certain states’ electoral counts as contested and non-countable—was also something Eastman knew and admitted was illegal. It’s not hard to understand how having one single person unilaterally declare an entire election to be void would be fundamentally antithetical to our democracy.
It’s also not hard to see how this would also be entirely unworkable as a system. As Judge Carter noted in his ruling, Eastman acknowledged as much, proving that his argument was advanced in bad faith.
As Eastman admitted, “You would just have the same party win continuously if [the] Vice President had the authority to just declare the winner of every State.”
Nevertheless, on January 5, 2021, just a day before the insurrection, Eastman met with Mike Pence’s top aides—chief of staff Marc Short and chief counsel Greg Jacob—and continued to argue that Pence should reject the Biden electors.
Jacob subsequently wrote, in an unpublished OpEd obtained by The Washington Post , that Eastman conceded during the meeting that “not a single member of the Supreme Court would support his position” regarding Pence’s authority, that “230 years of historical practice were firmly against it,” and that “no reasonable person would create a rule that invested a single individual with unilateral authority to determine the validity of disputed electoral votes for President of the United States.”
After that two hour meeting, according to Jacob, Eastman “had conceded that having Pence reject Biden electors was not a good plan.”
But this didn’t stop Eastman.
Even after the attack on the Capitol, Eastman refused to relent on the plan. He wrote an email to Jacob that very day saying Pence could still choose to not certify the results later in the evening, using the delay caused by the insurrection as a new justification.
This may explain why Mike Pence was so adamant in not departing the Capitol grounds with the secret service. Pence likely knew from prior discussions that one fallback for the plan was to have Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) preside over the electoral count if Pence recused himself—and the same thing could have happened if Pence were absent from the Capitol.
In fact, Grassley had indicated, rather enigmatically the day before the attack, that it would likely be him and not Mike Pence presiding over the count and debate, a statement that he has yet to explain.
One final thought:
Some worry that Eastman is being set up as the “fall guy” for the soft coup conspiracy, with Trump later arguing that he wasn’t part of any of this and was just getting advice from his attorneys, much like he now claims with respect to his accountants and claims of financial fraud.
But here’s the thing about conspiracies:
It only takes an agreement between two or more people and at least one act in furtherance of the conspiracy to find all co-conspirators guilty. There is already irrefutable evidence that Trump participated in calls with Mike Pence and John Eastman to try and convince Pence to do an illegal act of declaring the election for Trump or sending the election “back” to the states.
And there is plenty of evidence, based on Trump’s public speeches and tweets, that Trump knew all about the alternate elector scheme as well. Eastman even has handwritten notes from the former President about suggestions on how to get state legislatures to go along with their scheme.
In short, if Eastman is guilty of obstructing Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States through election interference, then Trump is right there with him. The important takeaway here is to stay laser focused on the illegality of the scheme itself —i.e. the knowing use of illegitimate alternate electors to sow confusion during the electoral count and the leveraging of the ceremonial role of the Vice President into one where he unilaterally overturned the entire election.
We should not concern ourselves with whether Eastman or Trump genuinely yet falsely believed they were trying to stop widespread election fraud—or for that matter a space alien in a human flesh suit—from destroying our Republic.
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We can know that Trump approved of the Eastman plan by the fact that Eastman spoke at Trump's Jan 6 rally, and in his speech that day Trump was suggesting that there was still time for Pence to follow Eastman's advice.
The idea that enough is not enough and more "proof" is needed is ludicrous.
Sure, the opinion of Judge Carter, who claimed falsely claimed cops were killed in the riot in this opinion.
Seems like he's guilty of a crime for lying in his opinion, huh?
Other than your brutal assassination of English grammar, it is interesting that some here are apparently trying to defend the insurrectionists instead of standing up for our constitution and nation. No doubt such worthless unamerican scum bags must feel the gut wrenching guilt and agony of being slimy bigoted traitors to their nation so I can only wonder what would make some formerly rational humans sink to such deplorable depths. Are they thinking some fantasy white nationalist reward is just behind door number two? Is that why they would stand up for such vile piece of shit insurrectionists who attacked our nation? Is it that they've decided that the existing system of laws, constitution, checks and balances and free and fair elections aren't satisfying their primal urge of dominance and control? If so then I hope they can hear this singular clear message in response to their vomit inducing right wing conservative ideology, which is, fuck off.
I am standing up the Constitution silly. Try looking past your narrow partisan interest sometime.
This might be a little hard for you to follow (no cursing or name calling), but give it a try.
From a Man for All Seasons:
No doubt such worthless unamerican scum bags m
Ooh, such angry purple language. That always plays well at recess. Since I'm not in eighth grade, I gave up on your little rant there. I assume you threw in some curse words to show what a real badass you are.
I wonder if there's thought behind your invective? Or do you just string insults together and hope fools mistake it for thought?
Trump would play the guy who sold Thomas More out.
Its more than a little curious how your defenses of the constitution always redound to the benefit of the worst people in the country.
Could have fooled me.
Seems like you read it just fine.
Clearly thoughtless words do not sting, but words that get to the heart of the matter exposing sad useless whiny losers can evoke angry bitter retorts.
Those who attacked our nation on January 6th shouldn't get to call themselves Americans, and neither should those who continue to defend them.
rump would play the guy who sold Thomas More out.
Trump would sell anyone out.
You don't see yourself in William Roper, willing to shred the laws to get the devil?
ittle curious how your defenses of the constitution always redound to the benefit of the worst people in the country.
It's news to me that they do. But yes, the worst people often benefit from the rule of law. You can always move to Russia where Putin just gets rid of those he deems the "worst people" without having to worry about those pesky laws. If you trust strongmen authoritarians to always do what's rigth, you don't really have to worry about laws. I don't. So I do.
You are a one trick pony. You defend conservative stars no matter what they do.
There are always conflicting opinions as to how the constitution and the rule of law applies to various matters. That is why controversial SC rulings come down more often than not based on the political makeup of the Court at a given time.
Somehow you always find a way to have the law land on the side of the political right. Its not funny.
[deleted]
Judge Carter drew a logical conclusion based on the evidence. The truth is the Eastman memo and trump's approval of it is a smoking gun.
Any defense of 'The Mar-a-Lardo Man' can only be undertaken through dishonest means.
Still waiting for the proofs of wrong doing. That would amount to actual video and audio. "Someone says or said" hearsay won't cut it. The viewership will drop drastically for the rest of this Soviet style propaganda fest. They tuned in the first night out of morbid curiosity.
If prosecutors needed video or audio to put anyone in jail there would be very few people in there. There is a great deal of evidence of trump's wrongdoing. The issue is do prosecutors have the guts to be the first to charge an ex-president criminally.
They have to prove specific criminal intent...that he was inciting and advocating an overthrow of the government.
All the rest is protected political speech, no matter how provocative it may sound to some
What voter fraud was perpetrated against Trump? Go into detail with evidence.
He has said HUNDREDS of times that he was cheated out of re-election. Where is the evidence?
The Eastman memo is a smoking gun. The only thing separating trump from indictment is the willingness of career prosecutors to charge him.
No doubt there are some people who dont think an ex president should ever be charged, period. If you got a couple like that on a jury it could be a problem.
No prosecutor wants to be the first to charge an ex president. What if it did fail? That persons career would be over, probably a lot sooner than they wanted it to be.
Only warning, dont troll me.
If you have something intelligent to say about the Eastman memo, say it.
Seems to me the prosecutors have an additional arrow in their quiver as well on this. If Trump were to be charged would not it happen in federal court in the District of Columbia as his "crimes" occurred in Washington DC? I think the defense would be very hard pressed to get even a neutral jury much less a sympathetic one for Trump there.
Seems to me with the smoking gun evidence and the rest of the body of evidence as well as a sympathetic to the prosecution jury, I have to wonder what they are waiting for.
We've been telling you this for years and got nothing but more unfounded accusations. Suddenly NOW evidence matters?
Apparently it's with your evidence of Trump's wrong doing.
This is, what, the 40th "Smoking Gun" you've presented?
This is my group, and I am not going to tolerate comments that do not address the issues. You have been shown over time a mountain of evidence against Trump, including the Eastman memo. If you want to refute the information in the Eastman memo, then you can do that. Comments like
will be deleted as trolling.
I couldn't remember off the top of my head but knew it was up there.
I've addressed something YOU said.
No. We. Haven't. All you and the rest of the left have provided is hearsay at best.
You misspelled "will be deleted for calling me out" wrong.
I am trying to be fair to you. The seeded article is about the Eastman memo. Either make some sort of comment related to the seeded article or risk deletion. Talking endlessly about other members comments without addressing the seeded material is trolling.
As I stated. I responded to YOUR comment. Just like your comment was in response to somebody's comment. That's how conversations work. You talk, somebody else talks.
You can talk all you want about the Eastman memo or make any other comment of substance.
will be deleted. I am not interested in constant non responsive comments.
Possibly you dont know anything about the Eastman memo?
And I did. isn't that what you were talking about in 5.1.2 ? And I responded to YOUR comment. Now, instead of answering my questions you want to delete them and for what? Calling your bluff?
Do you know a single thing about the Eastman memo? If so, you could fool everyone with your comments on this article.
I dont do endless chit chat. Once in a while , here and there. You and texan and a couple others endlessly avoid the issues.
We're done. Im going to start deleting.
I never said there was any. Dems cheated as usual, but not enough to alter the outcome
Exactly. Ignore the evidence (mostly Republicans testifying under oath shown on video and audio recordings) and claim it is all bullshit because the committee is partisan and biased.
Ultimately I think this is just more partisan nonsense. Those defending Trump are really just trying to defend their party and not let the other party make any headway. I suspect most of those defending Trump know that he did what he is accused of doing. They just cannot admit that.
I know it's hard to admit when one is wrong but if after many pieces of evidence gets piled in front of your face...isn't it crazy to admit that one is still not wrong?
Yes it is entirely irrational but it has been going on for years ... and at an especially crazy level since Nov 3, 2020.
After all, who in their right mind can truly believe that Trump actually won the election? That lie has been so utterly, thoroughly disproved at this point that anyone who tries to defend that loses all credibility.