A lawyer who spoke at former President Donald Trump‘s “Stop the Steal” rally is now distancing himself from a memo that argued the vice president could decertify the Electoral College votes.
John Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University, told National Review that having former Vice President Mike Pence reject the Electoral College votes was not a “viable” option and was a “crazy” idea. This comes despite Eastman echoing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s claims that it was legal to reject the votes during the Jan. 6 rally.
“They were internal discussion memos for the legal team. I had been asked to put together a memo of all the available scenarios that had been floated,” he told the outlet Friday regarding the memos that detailed this strategy. “I was asked to kind of outline how each of those scenarios would work and then orally present my views on whether I thought they were valid or not, so that’s what those memos did.”
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Eastman insisted Friday the strategy “was not being provided to Trump or Pence as my advice.”
“So anybody who thinks that that’s a viable strategy is crazy,” he said.
During the aftermath of the 2020 election, Eastman wrote a two-page memo detailing options Pence could take to decertify the Electoral College votes and reelect Trump. A six-page memo was then drafted shortly after the first, further outlining the plan for the vice president to overthrow the results of the election.
“All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1 p.m., he let the legislatures of the states look into this so that we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not,” Eastman told the crowd at the Jan. 6 Trump rally. “We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can’t get the answer to this question.”
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After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Chapman University announced Eastman, who had served as the law school dean and taught at the institution for over two decades, would not be returning. The college said the agreement closed a “challenging chapter” in its history.
In his account of his departure from the university, Eastman describes how some of his “colleagues” and several members on the Board of Trustees have “published false, defamatory statements” about him, adding he was left with “mixed” feelings about retiring.
As of Aug. 6, federal officials have arrested more than 500 people in connection to the Jan. 6 siege, hundreds of whom now face criminal charges, according to the Justice Department.
