One of Donald Trump’s codefendants in the Georgia election interference case may have shot himself in the foot after he appeared to make bombshell confession in a recent Fox News interview.
John Eastman, one of the 19 defendants in the sprawling 41-count indictment, appeared on Fox News on Wednesday night where he denied all wrongdoing and insisted he and the former president are innocent of all charges.
But, in his interview defending himself in the case, the attorney actually made a shock admission which legal experts say mounted to him confessing to a crime.
When host Laura Ingraham asked what his “constitutional” plan was on 6 January 2021 – as Mr Trump and his allies sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election – Mr Eastman admitted that he tried to stop the certification of the election results and wanted then-Vice President Mike Pence to at least halt Congress from certifying them for a week.
“Some people had urged that Vice President Pence simply had power to reject electors whose certification was still pending,” he said.
“I explicitly told Vice President Pence in the Oval Office on January 4, that even though it was an open issue, under the circumstances we had I thought it was the weaker argument, and it would be foolish to exercise such power.
“What I recommended, and I’ve said this repeatedly, is that he accede to requests from more than 100 state legislators in the swing states, to give them a week to try and sort out the impact of what everybody acknowledged was illegality in the conduct of the election.”
His response left many legal experts baffled – as it appeared that the attorney admitted live on air that he was guilty of one of the crimes with which he is charged.
Bradley P. Moss, an attorney specialising in national security, posted a clip of the interview on X/Twitter, saying: “He literally just confessed to the crime.”
Mr Eastman – a former attorney for Mr Trump, former dean of Chapman University’s law school and former law clerk of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – was hit with multiple charges in the sprawling indictment which accuses the former president and his group of allies of running a criminal enterprise to keep him in power at all costs.
Mr Eastman allegedly played a key role in the fake elector plot where a slate of fraudulent electors were put forward to falsely certify the election for Mr Trump – instead of the rightful winner President Joe Biden.
At a Georgia Senate hearing on 3 December 2020 – also attended by Mr Giuliani – Mr Eastman falsely told state lawmakers that they had both the power and “duty” to replace the rightful slate of Democratic electors with a group of fake electors who would fraudulently cast votes for Mr Trump.
Beyond Georgia alone, Mr Eastman compiled a memo falsely outlining how then-vice president Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 presidential election on 6 January 2021.
He surrendered for arrest last week while railing against the indictment “that should never have been brought”.
