The Brew: Lawfare Survivors Gather at Mar-a-Lago for New Documentary on Targeted Constitutional Scholar John Eastman
ATLANTA, GEORGIA - AUGUST 22: In this handout provided by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, John Eastman, former lawyer to former U.S. President Donald Trump poses for his booking photo on August 22, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Happy Tuesday!
Yesterday’s Brew mentioned that we spent Saturday evening at Mar-a-Lago. Today, let’s talk about why.
The Eastman Dilemma Premieres
As assuredly as Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building 30 years ago, one of the primary pillars of the American legal system has similarly been blown up in recent years: Attorneys have the obligation to represent and advise their clients, to the best of their ability, without fear of punishment — and such advice is privileged.
Since the 2020 election, this foundational principle has not applied if your client happens to be Donald J. Trump and/or someone who wants to petition the government over questions of election integrity. In fact, the Biden administration and some state officials have waged all-out war against any lawyer or firm that agreed to represent the Bad Orange Man.
Last Saturday night, several men who have been the victims of lawfare due to their connection to Donald Trump met up at Mar-a-Lago: Gen. Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Peter Navarro, former DOJ official Jeff Clark, and guest of honor John Eastman. Also on hand was the legendary liberal constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz, who saw lifelong friendships vanish because he stood up and declared using the law as a weapon against Trump and those around him was wrong. Tragically, he stood virtually alone among liberal lawyers in this regard.
Saturday’s occasion: The world premiere of The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice?
John Eastman is a highly respected constitutional scholar and professor, founder of the Clairmont Institute and its offspring, the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. He clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. He still wears out much shoe leather climbing the steps to the Supreme Court to argue cases. He was a regular talking head on cable news, and as I would discover over hors d’oeuvres, the small round-faced gentleman with the warm grin is a beloved mentor to a flock of next-generation conservative lawyers.
In other words, if you were President Donald Trump, convinced by the evidence swirling around you the 2020 election was fishier than a Seattle seafood market and you wanted to know what, if anything, could be done about it constitutionally, John Eastman is who you’d call.
The film documents what happened to Eastman once Trump did call. He became a target for destruction for laying out a legal argument for why Vice President Mike Pence had the constitutional authority on January 6 to hold up certifying electors from swing states where serious violations of state and federal election law had occurred until those states could investigate. Hundreds of legislators in those states were begging for such an opportunity.
That was it. That’s all Eastman did. He made an argument in an unsettled and very murky area of the law. The Constitution is unclear on whether the vice president has such power. When Thomas Jefferson was vice president, he thought he had the power to do this. (But what would he know? He only crafted the rules of the Senate.) An 1877 law designed to help fix huge problems in American elections made the question even murkier.
To be clear: Eastman did not try to overturn the 2020 election, as the legacy media screamed repeatedly.
As Alan Dershowitz argues in the film, Eastman acted no differently than Al Gore’s lawyers did in the 2000 election. For that matter, lawyers for George W. Bush did the same that year. Actually, Eastman wryly observes, he laid out nine legal scenarios for Trump in a memo, a majority of which still resulted in Biden winning the election. But you never heard any of that from Rachel Maddow or any of her ilk, did you? All they said was, “Election denier!” “Insurrectionist!”
Legal Advice = Crime? Yes, if You are Joe Biden’s Justice Department
The DOJ — while ignoring radicalized terrorists and child sex traffickers — sent armed FBI agents to raid Eastman’s home. They took all his electronic devices, but refused to show him a warrant. (Attorney-client privilege? The Fourth Amendment? Who needs those things? Mere trivialities!!) Eastman would eventually face criminal charges in Arizona and Georgia for his role in trying to “overturn” the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, the California State Bar sought to revoke his license to practice, accusing Eastman of ethical violations for arguing against certification even though he “knew” the charges of election malfeasance were untrue.
Here’s where the movie gets fun: Eastman defended himself against this baseless allegation by providing evidence from the swing states demonstrating just how corrupted the 2020 election was. Or to put a finer legal point on it, why it was entirely reasonable for him and President Trump (and half the country) to sincerely believe something was amiss in the ballot-counting process.
His run-through of some of the outrages — such as the open thwarting of state constitutions, truckloads of ballots showing up in the middle of the night, keeping observers from seeing ballot tabulations, etc. — generated a lot of head shaking and rueful chuckling among the audience at Mar-a-Lago. Really. As the evidence piles up, it’s easier to believe Mar-a-Lago is made of cheddar cheese than to believe that election was on the up and up.
The audience did not literally hiss (but it sure felt like they wanted to) when in the film Eastman reveals that contrary to what he says now, Pence did not immediately reject Eastman’s suggestion that the vice president did have the authority to hold off accepting electors. He found the argument interesting and worth further study by his staff.
“I’d like Americans to understand that what we did was in defense of the Constitution,” Eastman said of the film later. “I want people to learn about it and to come away angry so that it never happens again.”
The Discussions
Watching Eastman’s gentle explanations and harrowing experiences, it’s impossible not to ask, “They want to put this guy in prison?!” With that comes the unspoken follow-up thought: “If that’s the case, then I’m doomed.”
Before the screening, Death Row Records founder Michael Harris, who was pardoned by Donald Trump after over 30 years in prison, made a point: If esteemed and established leaders like Eastman, Flynn, and Giuliani can have their lives ruined in this manner, “What happens to the everyday citizens” who don’t have as many resources to defend themselves to start with?
Peter Navarro is the Trump trade advisor who spent several months in prison for refusing to testify before Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney’s bogus January 6 Committee, arguing that he was obviously protected from testifying by executive privilege. (But who cares about those protections when Trump’s avowed enemies are in charge?) Months after his release, Navarro still appeared physically haggard from his ordeal, his suit hanging loosely over his frail frame. He had little desire through the evening to talk about his own case, telling those in the ballroom, “This is about John Eastman.”
Toward the end of the discussion, Navarro hit the audience with a cold splash of reality. Amid the glitz and the glamour in the ballroom, the intricate decor of gold and 15 massive chandeliers, it might have been easy to forget that Mar-a-Lago is a private residence. But “this was the home” that was raided by the FBI.
Navarro insisted those responsible for the lawfare against Trump, as well as his lawyers and associates, must be held to account. “It will happen again,” he said, “unless … unless what?”
Indeed, what is the key to beating back lawfare?
Solutions
Those who weaponized the justice system must be held accountable. That was a common theme expressed by the five men on the discussion panel. Navarro asked the crowd if they were “Old Testament people” or “New Testament people.” In other words, “Do you want to see justice delivered, or do you want to forgive and move on now that Trump’s been reelected?” The Old Testament crowd won.
In addition, Clark highlighted the crucial need for conservatives to take back their state bar associations from progressives, if only to bring them into ideological balance. Thanks to the influence of the radical Project 65, these progressive state bars are actively working to target any lawyer that helps Trump and to disbar lawyers who engage in legal duties for purposes the project doesn’t like. Similarly, Clark called for bench reform. One need only look at the actions of Judge Juan Merchan in the Stormy Daniels case or the judges handing the J6 cases to shout “Amen” to this.
Flynn kept his focus on the need to fight the Marxism that has taken over crucial national institutions. Both on the stage and in casual conversations before the event, he kept returning to the need for the grassroots to get involved in local elections and local activism.
Not Since Galileo
Some friends and I chatted with Flynn in a drawing room before the event. The conversation moved from topic to topic. Finally, an independent journalist asked, “Knowing what you know now, would you do it all over again?”
Remember, Flynn was set up for a perjury charge by former FBI Director James Comey, who sent agents to entrap him under the guise of helping him transition into his new position as National Security Advisor in late 2016. Then-Vice President Joe Biden took time out from selling the power of his office to the Chinese long enough to suggest using a little-known eighteenth-century law against Flynn. In 2017, Flynn was tried and convicted by a Trump-hating judge, dragged through the mud, saw his finances ruined, his reputation shot, and his efforts to reshape the intelligence community blown out of the water.
“Would you do it all over again?” he was asked.
The warrior’s jaw tightened in defiance. “That’s why I’m standing here.”
Eastman and Giuliani also would say they’d go through it again. The cause is too important, the responsibility to set things right to pressing.
In his final remarks, Dershowitz rose to his feet. The elderly man who was nearly swallowed by the comfortable chairs in the lounge before the panel discussion began bellowing with the vigor of a legal eagle one-third his age, and pointed to those with him on the stage. “They picked on the wrong people!” Dershowitz shouted. “This is the greatest collection of thought criminals since Galileo sat alone!”
Judging from the crowd’s reaction to the film, the affection shown to John Eastman, and the love shown to the man who opened his home for the event, we can say with certainty that those who have been on the front lines of the legal fight since the dark days of 2021 will no longer be fighting alone.
To steal from Dershowitz, they picked on the wrong people. They picked on the American people.
Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.