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Tag: january 6 investigation
Exit The Execrable John Eastman, Disgraced And Soon To Be Disbarred

Exit The Execrable John Eastman, Disgraced And Soon To Be Disbarred

It happened in California last Wednesday. After presiding over a 35-day trial, State Bar Court Hearing Judge Yvette D. Roland found that John Eastman should be disbarred from practicing law. Eastman, who also faces multiple criminal charges in the Georgia RICO case for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, is suspended from the practice of law awaiting a determination of the case by the California Supreme Court, which has final jurisdiction in matters concerning the California bar. If the Supreme Court upholds the hearing court judge’s decision, Eastman will also be fined $10,000 and ordered to pay court costs associated with his trial for disbarment.

Eastman was one of the primary actors in Donald Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the election of 2020. Eastman caught Trump’s attention in August of that year when he wrote an op-ed piece for Newsweek falsely asserting that Kamala Harris was ineligible under the Constitution to serve as Vice President because her parents were not citizens at the time of her birth. Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, was Senator from California and had been in office for more than three years at the time of Eastman’s article.

Eastman was roundly denounced by practically every Constitutional scholar in the country for his assertion of Harris’ ineligibility, but got a positive reaction from Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign adviser who would go on to join Eastman as a defendant in the Georgia RICO case. Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count in Georgia last October and faces disbarment in Colorado due to her guilty plea. Rudy Giuliani has had his law license suspended in New York, and Sidney “The Kraken” Powell was sanctioned in Michigan for filing specious lawsuits challenging the election results in that state.

Ellis arranged for Eastman to meet with the Trump campaign just before election day. He stayed in touch with Ellis, and in December, Trump asked him to represent him in the Supreme Court challenge of the election results filed by Attorney General Ken Paxton. In his brief to the Supreme Court, Eastman asserted that it was not necessary for Trump to prove that “fraud occurred,” only that the election results “materially deviated” from what state lawmakers had intended. Eastman added, challenging the actions of state officials who ran the 2020 election in four battleground states, “By failing to follow the rule of law, these officials put our nation's belief in elected self-government at risk.”

Two days after the Texas lawsuit was filed, the Supreme Court refused to hear it.

Eastman wasn’t finished, however. Later in December, he wrote a now infamous memo to Trump asserting that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the right to reject electoral ballots from certain battleground states, or to delay the certification of those ballots by returning them to the states. This became the final strategy employed by Trump as the meeting of Congress on January 6 approached. Eastman met with Trump and Pence in the Oval Office and told Pence he could reject ballots and adjourn the certification process in favor of giving battleground states the opportunity to investigate so-called electoral fraud.

On the morning of January 6, Eastman gave an unhinged speech at the Trump rally on the Ellipse, falsely asserting that voting machines had “hidden folders” that awarded votes that had been cast for Trump to Joe Biden. He told the crowd that he was “demanding” that Pence delay the certification of ballots that afternoon so states could “investigate” fraud.

The decision disbarring Eastman is 128 pages long and goes into every detail of Eastman’s failed and lie-filled attempts to overturn the election. The decision states that Eastman was aware that many of the claims he made in his speech on the Ellipse were lies and accused him of “ostrich-like behavior” in ignoring facts that proved there were no “hidden” ballots in Georgia.

“Eastman ignored readily available evidence demonstrating that his statements were false and willfully made intentionally false statements at the Save America rally at the Ellipse,” it says. The decision also blows holes in Eastman’s theories about Pence’s ability to disallow electoral votes and delay the certification procedures.

Eastman pursued his attempt to disrupt the certification of the election after he had left the stage at the Trump rally. That afternoon, as the crowd swarmed the Capitol and Vice President Pence was forced to leave his post presiding over the Senate’s work, Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Jacob, emailed Eastman, “thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.”

At 2:25 p.m., as Jacob stood with Pence at the secret location Pence had been evacuated to in a garage under the Capitol, Eastman emailed Jacob, “My bullshit, seriously? The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened.”

Eastman emailed Jacob again at 6:09 p.m., and again at 9:44 p.m., even “after the electoral count had resumed,” according to the California decision disbarring Eastman. “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here,” Eastman wrote.

The court found that there had been no “illegal activity” and that in nearly all cases, Eastman knew this or ignored easily available evidence. “Upon consideration of the totality of the facts, the court finds weighty circumstantial evidence demonstrating a collaborative effort between Eastman and President Trump to impede the counting of elector votes on January 6, 2021, as articulated in Eastman’s memos,” the judge wrote. “The evidence clearly and convincingly proves that Eastman and President Trump entered into an agreement to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress by unlawfully having Vice President Pence reject or delay the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021.”

The judge’s decision in disbarring Eastman does not bode well for his chances facing charges in the RICO case in Georgia. The judge considered some of the same lies Eastman is charged with telling in Georgia, including the lie that “suitcases of ballots” had been removed from “under a table” and included in the Georgia count.

“The State Farm Arena investigation revealed, as early as December 5, 2020, that there were no ballots ‘hidden’ under a table,” the judge found. “Moreover, Eastman acknowledges that Georgia law did not require public viewing of ballot canvassing at the State Farm Arena,” another lie that Eastman had told. Noting that Eastman had not viewed a video that was available of the activities in the State Farm Arena, the judge found Eastman guilty of “willful blindness” of the facts.

Eastman was also accused of knowingly including false evidence of fraud in a lawsuit he filed against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp seeking to overturn the Georgia election results. The judge found that a footnote to the lawsuit that Eastman included seeking to “distance Trump from the allegations” in the lawsuit “demonstrates knowledge of the falsity of the allegations, otherwise such a footnote would not be needed.”

The disbarment decision goes on like that, page after deadly page. Without a license to practice law, or for that matter to represent any clients, Eastman is going to have a hard time finding the money to pay the fine and court costs assessed against him. When Eastman billed the Trump campaign for the legal services he provided during the coup attempt, including his phony Pence memo and lawsuits filled with lies that he filed on the campaign’s behalf, Trump refused to pay him.

With his disbarment in effect and the record of evidence in the case available to Fani Willis and her Georgia prosecutors, ever the Trump sycophant, loyal to the end, Eastman has vowed to fight the charges he faces in Georgia. Good luck with that.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Endorse This! Colbert Renames Mobster Movie For Donald Trump

Endorse This! Colbert Renames Mobster Movie For Donald Trump

Late Show host Stephen Colbert returned from hiatus with a blistering takedown of failed former President Trump -- after it was revealed the wannabe mafioso attempted to contact a witness in the House Select Committee's January 6 investigation. Luckily, the witness declined to respond to the call and alerted counsel

“He’s trying to commit witness tampering using his own phone,” Colbert said of Trump. “You can see the whole story in the new mob film Not Very Good At This, Fellas. ”

The witness has yet to appear at a public hearing, but was called by Trump after the damning public testimony by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson,. The hearings into the January 6 insurrection and attempted coup are scheduled to resume in prime time on Thursday.

Endorse This! Kimmel Lays Into Drunk Giuliani's Election Night Scheme

Endorse This! Kimmel Lays Into Drunk Giuliani's Election Night Scheme

Jimmy Kimmel didn't waste any time laying into the latest revelation about lispy, gassy, leaky, and now tipsy Rudy Giuliani and the revelation that he was drunk on election night. Kimmel devoted his entire monologue to “Episode 2 of CSI: I Can’t Believe Donald Trump’s Not in Jail Yet”—otherwise known as the January 6 congressional hearings.

Trump’s absolutely insane and authoritarian decision to “reject the advice” of members of his team and declare victory on Election Night when even Fox News said he’d lost came from “an apparently inebriated” Rudy Giuliani.

“Apparently inebriated—which, by the way, is the title of Rudy Giuliani’s biography,” joked Kimmel. “Rudy Giuliani told him to go out and say he won. The way that you can tell Rudy is drunk is his breath smells more like booze than cigars and cat turds for a change.”

The claim that Rudy was as lit as the Capitol on January 6 was backed up by former Trump aide Jason Miller who, when asked whether there was anyone that night who “in your observation had had too much to drink,” replied, “Um… Mayor Giuliani.”

As Kimmel said, but then what was Trump's excuse?

Watch the entire segment below:

Tjucker Carlson

How Tucker Carlson’s Favorite January 6 Conspiracy Crumbled

Ray Epps was always something of an odd choice for a right-wing scapegoat in the January 6 Capitol insurrection, considering that you’d have trouble finding a more dedicated Donald Trump supporter and Oath Keepers member prior to that event. But then, the conspiracy theory concocted by far-right apologists for the riot claiming that Epps was secretly in cahoots with the FBI to make the Capitol siege happen as a way to entrap “Patriots” shows how readily these fanatics will eat their own.

And now the theory—promoted by Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald and the whole “1/6 Truther” crowd, and largely discredited already because of its counter-factual premises—has crumbled completely. Freshly revealed information from the FBI’s investigation shows that Epps—contrary to the theory—had nothing to do with inspiring the initial breach of police barricades, and that moreover he had no connection with the FBI’s informants program.

The conspiracy theorists had pointed to Epps’ appearance at a key moment in the riot, at around 12:45 p.m. that afternoon at the northwestern corner of the Capitol lawn, where police had set up a barricade around which a crowd started to gather. Only five Capitol Police officers were stationed there, supported by a couple dozen more closer to the Capitol. The crowd chanted: “We love Trump!”

A group of Proud Boys that had already marched around the Capitol was there, including Ryan Samsel, a Proud Boys organizer from Pennsylvania wearing a red MAGA cap and a jean jacket. Epps was seen on video conferring briefly with Samsel. A little while later, Samsel was the first man to approach the barricades and begin pushing on them and fighting police. Others joined in, toppling the metal barricades and knocking a police officer backwards onto her head, causing a concussion. Meanwhile, the mob began pouring onto the lawn as the outnumbered police retreated back to where their fellow officers had formed an interim line of resistance that eventually was overwhelmed.

According to the New York Times’ Alan Feuer, Epps called an FBI tipline two days after the riot, when he saw his name on a list of suspects, and cooperated with authorities immediately. He told investigators he had actually tried to calm Samsel down, telling him the police outside the building were merely doing their jobs.

When investigators spoke to Samsel, he told them the same thing: A man he did not know had come up to him at the barricades and urged him to chill out. “He came up to me and he said, ‘Dude’—his entire words were, ‘Relax, the cops are doing their job,’” Samsel said.

The person who finally triggered him to attack the police lines, in fact, was national Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs, who had led the phalanx of men around the Capitol to that barricade. Samsel later told the FBI that Biggs encouraged him to go push on the barricades and challenge the police, and when he hesitated, Biggs flashed a gun and questioned his manhood, urging him again to attack the barricades—all of which Biggs’ attorneys adamantly deny.

Biggs remains imprisoned in the D.C. jail along with other key January 6 insurrectionists, including his fellow Proud Boys. He and others still face charges of seditious conspiracy and multiple other felonies. They also face a civil lawsuit filed by the D.C. district attorney.

The conspiracy theory blaming the FBI for the insurrection by fingering Epps as a key player in the riot was concocted by the far-right propaganda organ Revolver News and its white-nationalist editor/writer Darren Beattie. This reportage, as we’ve explored in depth, was misbegotten pseudo-journalistic babble built around a simple miscomprehension of both how the federal informants’ program works and how federal prosecutors’ use of cooperating witnesses functions. Beattie fumbles basic facts and then multiplies it with baseless speculation about Epps—who in fact was a well-known Trump supporter and Oath Keepers figure in Arizona in before the insurrection.


This didn’t matter to the gaslighting brigade led by Tucker Carlson and his cohorts, who paraded Beattie’s reportage to the nation as though it had legitimacy, and built a propaganda campaign for Fox News’ audience of millions to gobble up readily. At one point, Carlson even had Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas eagerly pushing the Epps conspiracy theory.

Cruz not only bought into Carlson’s conspiracist nonsense while on his Fox News program—abjectly apologizing for having called the January 6 insurrection “a despicable act of terrorism,” which Carlson considered unacceptable, he promptly turned up in a Senate hearing on domestic terrorism and demanded to know about Epps from a senior FBI official, Jill Sanborn.

“Ms. Sanborn, a lot of Americans are concerned that the federal government deliberately encouraged illegal violent conduct on January 6,” Cruz said, demanding to know if that was true. Sanborn said it was not.

Amid the furor, the House Select Committee’s Twitter account posted a response to the theories about Epps:

The Committee has interviewed Epps. Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on Jan 5th or 6th or at any other time, & that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.

Nonetheless, Carlson went on his Fox show Wednesday night and claimed that Sanborn’s stony answers to Cruz’s questions were evidence that, in fact, “DOJ had some role in the events of January 6,” and then speculated baselessly about the committee’s tweet:

When exactly and under what circumstances did the committee talk to Ray Epps? Supposedly this interview was conducted in secret last November. If that is true—we don’t know that it is, but let’s say it is—then why did the committee wait months to tell us today in a tweet? When the committee got its hands on Mark Meadows’ text messages, we seem to remember they leaked those to the media within hours. And by the way, was this Ray Epps interview conducted under oath? Did Democrats subpoena his electronic communications as they did with Meadows and so many others? Will the information Epps revealed to the committee be available to the many January 6 defendants who are now awaiting trial? Can their lawyers see a transcript of the interview? Can we see a transcript of this interview? If not, why not?



Carlson went on to claim that even though “Epps is a longtime right-wing activist” who “urged protesters to riot,” Democrats on the committee have become “protective” of him. “So what’s going on here? Something is, that’s for sure,” he concluded.

As Politifact explains, Beattie never even confirmed that Epps is an FBI informant, but rather speculated broadly that he is. His actions on January 6, videos show, are wholly consistent with those of the outspoken Trump supporter he has been for years (notably as a spokesman for the Arizona Oath Keepers). And as with all of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who had informant relationships with the FBI, if Epps was also himself an informant, the information he was providing was intelligence on their “leftist” opponents, not on their own organization.

This, of course, completely misapprehends and mischaracterizes the nature of the relationship of the FBI to the right-wing groups involved in the insurrection—because we have known for awhile that figures like Biggs and his Proud Boys cohort, national chairman Enrique Tarrio (arrested on January 3 in D.C.), as well as a number of Oath Keepers, acted as informants for the FBI—all directed not at those right-wing groups, but at “antifa,” Black Lives Matter, and various leftist groups.

The cozy relationship that far-right groups enjoyed with law enforcement generally, in fact, has played a key role in their continual emboldenment over the past five years, constantly ratcheting up their violence and threatening rhetoric, culminating in the events of January 6. On that day, many of them directed their fury at police officers, believing they were being betrayed by forces they had assumed were on their side.

As the Brennan Center for Justice’s Michael German explored in a study, law enforcement has increasingly been polluted by the rising numbers of far-right extremists within their ranks—some of them recruited from within police forces, while others have surreptitiously infiltrated them. “While it is widely acknowledged that racist officers subsist within police departments around the country, federal, state, and local governments are doing far too little to proactively identify them, report their behavior to prosecutors who might unwittingly rely on their testimony in criminal cases, or protect the diverse communities they are sworn to serve,” he writes.

German, himself a former FBI agent, has a more realistic view of the agency than Greenwald’s caricatured vision of a relentlessly oppressive monster that journalists should routinely repudiate and attack. Like any such operation endowed with phenomenal powers that are easily abused, the FBI indeed has a long history both of horrifying atrocities and impressive work safeguarding the American public.

And a major portion of the former involves the way that federal law enforcement has historically targeted left-wing activists while routinely ignoring far-right extremist violence and giving its perpetrators the kid-glove treatment—the latter of which, apparently, is just fine with Carlson, Greenwald, and company.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.