October 28, 2021 01:15 PM UTC

January 6th Committee Zeroing In On Ganahl Bestie Eastman

• 12 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post reported Tuesday night, and for some reason still hasn’t rung a bell with local reporters:

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to subpoena John Eastman, the pro-Trump legal scholar who outlined scenarios for denying Joe Biden the presidency, according to the panel’s chairman.

“It will happen,” Chair Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said in an interview Tuesday of a subpoena for Eastman, who played a key role in the legal operation that was run out of a “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington in the days and hours leading up to Jan. 6. Thompson did not provide a timeline for when the subpoena will be issued.

The committee has requested documents and communications related to Eastman’s legal advice and analysis on how President Donald Trump could seek to overturn the election results and remain in office.

In an interview published late last week by the conservative National Review, former University of Colorado “visiting conservative scholar” John Eastman, who was revealed in the explosive new book Peril documenting the final days of the Trump administration as the principal author of the plan to flip the results on January 6th during the certification process, denied that he believed his own plan was viable:

Eastman says he disagrees with some major points in the two-page memo. That version says that Trump would be reelected if Pence invalidated enough electoral votes to send the election to the House of Representatives: “Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is reelected there as well.”

Eastman’s final six-page memo says Trump would be reelected by the House “IF the Republicans in the State Delegations stand firm.” But Eastman says he told Trump at the January 4 meeting in the White House: “Look, I don’t think they would hold firm on this.” (There were actually 27 delegations under GOP control, but Liz Cheney is the sole representative for Wyoming, Wisconsin’s decisive vote would have been Mike Gallagher, and both Cheney and Gallagher strongly opposed overturning the results of the election.)

“So anybody who thinks that that’s a viable strategy is crazy,” Eastman tells National Review.

But then two days ago, progressive provocateur Lauren Windsor, posing as a doting supporter, caught Eastman flipping 180 degrees and agreeing there’s “no question” his plan was legally solid:

EXCLUSIVE: Author of Jan 6 coup memo John Eastman told us Mike Pence didn’t take his solid legal advice & overturn the election bc Pence is “an establishment guy”

(He previously told @NRO the memo was not “viable” and would have been “crazy” to pursue.)

Stay tuned for Part 2. pic.twitter.com/RQeUceH1bn

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) October 26, 2021

Obviously, folks, one of these John Eastmans knows he is lying! We’re inclined to think it’s the John Eastman talking to what he thought was friendly Trump supporters, and not the John Eastman trying to save his reputation with audiences who know better. Eastman’s brazen contradicting of himself on whether he gave Trump sound legal advice is another example of Republicans forced to recite pro-Trump mythology in MAGA settings while not even trying to defend the madness prevalent inside the Trump bubble when speaking to those outside it. Watching Eastman, who is the kind of guy who never, ever admits making a mistake no matter how absurd his denial gets, trying to square this circle in the January 6th Committee is going to be fascinating stuff.

Will Eastman’s patron and devoted supporter at CU Heidi Ganahl be ready to answer some “divisive questions” by then? If Eastman’s two-facedness is any guide, you’d better ask her twice.