John Eastman is a former professor and dean at the Chapman University School of Law.
51 Facts About John Eastman
2.
John Eastman ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for California's 34th congressional district in 1990, and for the office of California Attorney General in 2010.
3.
John Eastman is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
4.
John 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, John Eastman incorrectly told Vice President Mike Pence in an Oval Office meeting, on January 5,2021, that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification.
5.
John Eastman sent to 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.
6.
On January 6,2021, John Eastman presented a speech at the White House Trump rally that preceded the 2021 United States Capitol attack.
7.
John Eastman subsequently implored Vice President Pence to violate the Electoral Count Act to delay certification of the election, via Pence's legal counsel Greg Jacob, who responded by calling John Eastman a "serpent in the ear of the president of the United States".
8.
On January 13,2021, John Eastman retired from the Chapman University faculty after the controversy created by his having spoken at the Trump rally.
9.
In December 2022, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack recommended John Eastman be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, along with Trump and potentially others.
10.
John Eastman graduated from the Dallas-area Lewisville High School and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Dallas.
11.
John Eastman then earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Government from the Claremont Graduate School.
12.
In 1989, prior to attending law school, John Eastman served as the director of Congressional and public affairs at the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
13.
John Eastman was the unsuccessful 1990 Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in California's 34th congressional district.
14.
John Eastman has appeared on conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt's Fox News program The Hugh Hewitt Show, commenting on law.
15.
John Eastman served as an attorney for the State of South Dakota, representing it in a denied petition to the US Supreme Court in a constitutional challenge to federal spending.
16.
John Eastman has represented the North Carolina legislature and the State of Arizona in unsuccessfully petitioning the Supreme Court in cases involving same-sex marriage, abortion, and immigration.
17.
John Eastman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2014 arguing that President Barack Obama's unilateral suspension of deportation for undocumented immigrants was unconstitutional.
18.
In 1990 John Eastman was unopposed in the primary to become the Republican challenger of long-time 34th District incumbent Esteban Torres in California's San Gabriel Valley.
19.
On February 1,2010, John Eastman resigned as dean of the Chapman University School of Law to pursue the Republican nomination for California Attorney General.
20.
John Eastman is chairman of the Federalist Society's practice group on federalism and separation of powers.
21.
John Eastman is chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage.
22.
John Eastman is a director of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which brings election lawsuits.
23.
John Eastman is both a member of the board and on the faculty at the Claremont Institute.
24.
John Eastman sits on the board of advisors of St Monica Academy and the advisory board of the St Thomas More Law Society of Orange County.
25.
John Eastman asserted she could not be a US citizen by birth despite being born in Oakland, California, if neither of her parents was a permanent resident at the time of her birth.
26.
John Eastman said that she could have subsequently obtained citizenship derived from the naturalization of her parents if one of them had become a citizen prior to her 16th birthday in 1980, which would have allowed Harris to fulfill the nine-year citizenship requirement necessary to become a senator.
27.
However, Axios noted that other constitutional scholars do not accept John Eastman's view, labeling it "baseless".
28.
Axios criticized John Eastman for dismissing the eligibility concerns of 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz, born in Calgary, Canada, in a 2016 National Review op-ed, claiming they were "silly".
29.
Lorelei Laird, in an Above The Law article, pointed out that John Eastman was arguing that Harris was not even a US citizen.
30.
John Eastman briefly met with Trump campaign advisors in a Philadelphia hotel room the weekend after the 2020 presidential election.
31.
In early December 2020, Trump contacted John Eastman, asking him to challenge the results of the 2020 United States presidential election before the Supreme Court.
32.
On December 9,2020, Eastman represented Trump in a motion to intervene in Texas v Pennsylvania, a case filed directly in the US Supreme Court by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, in which the state of Texas sought to annul the voting processes and, by extension, the electoral college results of at least four other states.
33.
The day of the Trump retweet, someone in the Trump administration called John Eastman asking him to write a memo "asserting the vice president's power to hold up the certification" of the presidential election.
34.
John Eastman circulated a two-page outline and memo to the Trump legal team several days later, followed by a more extensive memo later.
35.
John Eastman called the vice president "the ultimate arbiter" of the election in his two-page memo.
36.
On December 24,2020, in an email exchange with New York appellate attorney Kenneth Chesebro and Trump campaign officials, John Eastman wrote he was aware of a "heated fight" within the Supreme Court about whether to hear a case.
37.
On January 2,2021, John Eastman joined Trump, the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others in a conference call with 300 Republican legislators from Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to brief them on allegations of voter fraud, with the objective of the legislators attempting to decertify their states' election results.
38.
On January 5,2021, John Eastman met with Pence in the Oval Office to argue, incorrectly, that the vice president has the constitutional authority to alter or otherwise change electoral votes.
39.
On January 6, John Eastman spoke alongside Giuliani at the "Save America" rally that preceded the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol and asserted without evidence that balloting machines contained "secret folders" that altered voting results.
40.
The request came a few days after a heated exchange between Herschmann and John Eastman that ended with Herschmann suggesting that John Eastman hire a criminal defense lawyer.
41.
John Eastman asserted this had been reported by The Washington Post days earlier, though the article he appeared to reference did not support his assertion and did not mention antifa.
42.
John Eastman asserted his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination on December 1,2021, in a letter in which he refused to testify to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
43.
CNN reported John Eastman met with the committee but invoked the Fifth Amendment 146 times.
44.
John Eastman relinquished nearly 8,000 emails to the committee in February 2022 but asserted privilege for about 11,000 others.
45.
Seventeen months after the election, John Eastman continued to press state legislatures to "de-certify" their election results.
46.
In May 2022, the University of Colorado, where John Eastman was a visiting professor, released an email John Eastman sent to Pennsylvania legislator Russ Diamond in December 2020.
47.
John Eastman wrote this new "untainted popular vote" would "help provide some cover" for the legislature to create a slate of Trump electors for certification.
48.
Judge Carter ruled in October 2022 that John Eastman must turn over an additional 33 documents to the January 6 committee, including eight he determined were ineligible for attorney-client privilege because they related to possible criminal activity.
49.
On January 26,2023, John Eastman was charged with multiple disciplinary counts by the State Bar of California.
50.
The university revoked some of John Eastman's public-facing duties but permitted him to conduct scholarship.
51.
On January 7,2021, John Eastman edited this Wikipedia article to portray his post-election role in a more favorable light.