June 24, 2022 01:19 PM UTC

Ganahl To Eastman: ‘I’ve Heard Wonderful Things About You’

• 1 Comments
• by: Erik Maulbetsch

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

By Jason Salzman, Colorado Times Recorder

Heidi Ganahl, a Republican who’s running to be governor of Colorado, has stated multiple times that she “never met” John Eastman, who was a legal architect of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

But, in fact, as first reported by 9News’ Kyle Clark June 17, the pair did meet via email; they exchanged at least 10 messages, as they tried to set up a lunch appointment late last year.

“I have heard wonderful things about you and would love to get together if you are available,” wrote Ganahl to Eastman on Oct. 6, 2020, in the initial email in the thread, obtained from a source.

“So nice to make you’re virtual acquaintance,” responded Eastman, who was then a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado’s Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization.

The two, along with Eastman’s wife, settled on a lunch date for Wed., Nov. 18, according to the email thread, but Eastman had to cancel the appointment because, he wrote to Ganahl, he’d “been down with a nasty cough for a week” and he didn’t “yet see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Eastman didn’t divulge in his email to Ganahl, who was a CU Regent at the time, that he’d caught COVID from people associated with the Trump administration, according to 9News. He’d contracted the disease when he and Trump officials discussed Eastman’s baseless plan to overturn the 2020 election results.

About a month prior to his email exchange with Ganahl, Eastman touched off a national outcry after speculating in a Newsweek op-ed that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris might not be eligible to serve as vice president because her parents were possibly temporary visitors to the U.S. at the time of Harris’ birth.

Eastman’s piece prompted immediate calls for CU Boulder to rescind his appointment. Chancellor Phil DiStefano declined to do so, but acknowledged the damage Eastman caused. As the Denver Post reported,

“’Even if he did not intend it, Professor Eastman’s op-ed has marginalized members of our CU Boulder community and sown doubts in our commitment to anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion,’ Chancellor Phil DiStefano wrote in an email to faculty Monday.”

Eastman was denounced as both wrong and a birther, like a string of other Colorado conservative figures, moreover his direct response at the time was disturbingly prescient.

“Eastman said, so far, nobody has been able to point him toward his article being used as material for racists.”

In a June 23 interview with CBS4’s Shaun Boyd, Ganahl said that, in retrospect, the Benson Center should not have hired Eastman in the first place.

“I don’t know enough about what he’s done but I don’t think it’s been good for CU, but looking back he had a very stellar career before we brought him on as a visiting professor, so hindsight is 20-20.”

Ganahl has said multiple times that she agreed with CU’s decision not to fire Eastman. Last August she urged Republican donors to support the Benson Center, saying its private funding protected it “over the last year with all the controversy that was going on with Eastman.”

In an interview with Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner June 17. Ganahl repeatedly refused to say if she disagreed with Eastman’s actions in trying to help overturn the 2020 Election results.

Asked directly if she disagrees with Eastman’s “actions” in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Ganahl said, “I think there was a lot that went on that was bad news for our country and for the University of Colorado being connected to it.”

See Ganahl’s email exchange with John Eastman below.