John C. Eastman

John Charles Eastman (born 1960) is an American lawyer and former academic who has been criminally indicted for assisting then-President Donald Trump's efforts to maintain the presidency and prevent its transition to Joe Biden after the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public-interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He is a former professor and former dean at Chapman University School of Law. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for California's 34th congressional district in 1990, and for California Attorney General in 2010. He is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eastman has been criminally indicted in Georgia and is facing disbarment proceedings in California for his role in assisting then-president Donald Trump's attempts to undo the 2020 election results, including by pressuring vice president Mike Pence to reject the votes of electors from crucial swing states that Biden won while certifying the 2020 United States presidential election. He is also suspected of being a co-conspirator in the federal indictment of Donald Trump. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Eastman wrote a controversial op-ed in August 2020 that falsely suggested the then-presumed Democratic nominee for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was not a "natural-born citizen" within the meaning of Article II of the Constitution and thus ineligible for the position. Eastman was a key participant in the subsequent attempts to overturn the election; during President Donald Trump's last efforts before the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, Eastman told Vice President Mike Pence in an Oval Office meeting, on January 5, 2021, that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification. Pence did not accept Eastman's argument. Eastman also sent Republican senator Mike Lee a six-point plan of action for Pence to throw out the electors from seven states to keep Trump in power, which Lee rejected. On January 6, 2021, Eastman gave a speech at the White House Trump rally that preceded the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Later that day, after the rioters had attacked the Capitol, Eastman e-mailed Greg Jacob, counsel to Vice President Pence, and implored him to violate the Electoral Count Act by delaying certification of the election.