Laura Ingraham surely knew that indicted coup lawyer John Eastman was spewing a bunch of lies about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, yet she let them stand unchallenged.
Last night was Part 1 of John Eastman’s Fox News Rehab Tour on The Ingraham Angle. He spouted a lot of the usual lies (thoroughly debunked by none other than Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr) about the MAGA plot to overturn the 2020 election. Fox News just paid nearly $800 million for its defamatory role in helping that effort. Another, bigger defamation case still looms. But there was no mention of any of that, at least not in this part of the interview.
Naturally, Eastman played the victim as he discussed the charges against him in Fulton County, Georgia and disbarment proceedings against him in California:
EASTMAN: We did nothing wrong. We were challenging the election for what even Vice President Pence described as serious allegations of fraud and numerous instances of officials violating state law. And if we can't speak out about that, then our freedom of speech our right to petition, the government for redress of grievances are gone.
But also, importantly, I'm an attorney. And you know, the people that I was representing had a right to counsel, and what's going on here with the bar complaints against everybody involved in any of the litigation, this Fulton County complaint, the unindicted co-conspirators and the federal action, they're trying to stifle people from being able to get representation and election challenges. They've made that very clear that that's what they're up to, and we can't allow it to happen.
Host Laura Ingraham, kinda sorta challenged. She said the argument “on the other side” is that the attorney-client privilege can be pierced if there was no reasonable, good faith position taken. … And if, I guess, if there was a reasonable possibility a crime had been committed, then that attorney client privilege goes out the window.”
Ingraham is not only a lawyer, she, along with Eastman, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She, Eastman and other former Thomas clerks recently signed a letter defending him from his numerous ethics scandals. But my point here is that she is perfectly capable of delving into the issue of the “reasonable possibility a crime had been committed” or whether a “reasonable” position had been taken in the plot to overthrow the government. It speaks volumes that she merely continued by saying, “How would you respond to that?”
Eastman answered with another load of BS. “Look, if disputed, questions of constitutional law, all of a sudden become criminal, we could, we could throw you know the entire legal profession, the entire legal academy in jail.”
FACT CHECK: In reality, Eastman was not indicted for merely putting forth “disputed questions of constitutional law,” but working to overturn the election, as Ingraham surely knows.
From Associated Press:
[W]hile attorneys do have wide berth to advance untested or unconventional positions, experts say a “lawyers being lawyers” defense will be challenging to pull off to the extent prosecutors can directly link the indicted lawyers to criminal schemes alleged in the indictment. That includes efforts to line up fake electors in Georgia and other states who would falsely assert that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, had won their respective contests.
Ingraham did not point that out. She sounded like a defense attorney as she asked her next question that clearly suggested the RICO [racketeering] charges against Eastman are bogus:
INGRAHAM: On the RICO side of the Fulton County case, that that would require findings of bad faith on the part of, you know, all the co-defendants that were engaged in this RICO conspiracy according to [D.A.] Fani Willis. So, on that score, John, that would have to be you all basically agreeing, implicitly or explicitly that y'all knew that this was all phony, and that your effort – your, your, your decision amongst yourselves was to advance a plan to overturn the election. And to that, you say?
Eastman responded by insisting no evidence will be found. But his first sentence sounded like a Freudian slip:
EASTMAN: Well, they've got all the evidence. They've got all my emails, my phone was seized over a year ago. So, they've got all that stuff. And I challenge them to find a single email or communication that supports that implausible theory.
Yes, the prosecutors have got all the evidence, as MSNBC demonstrated
Nicolle Wallace discussed this interview today on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House. She announced, “Challenge accepted.” Then she played clips from the January 6th Committee revealing that Eastman admitted in an email his fake electors scheme had no legal weight and was “dead on arrival.” Also, that Eastman had asked for a presidential pardon.
Wallace went on to note that Trump’s legal team lost 60 cases alleging election wrongdoing, that fraud was never found and “most of them admitted it” in emails or phone calls.
MSNBC’s Barbara McQuade explains the coup-plotters’ gaslighting
Barbara McQuade, a law professor and former federal prosecutor summed up the Eastman interview perfectly.
MCQUADE: This is all a PR campaign. So, in court, this kind of defense will fail miserably because they’ll have the emails … But it seems to me the game at this end is convince as many voters as possible that this is all a bunch of nothing, that there is no crime, that they’ve done nothing wrong and this is a good faith legal challenge and if Donald Trump could get himself elected before this case ever goes to trial, by convincing enough people that this is all made up, then that is the best defense they have.
McQuade went on to say that she has spoken with “reasonably intelligent” people who “are listening to people like John Eastman” and believe that the criminal justice system has been “weaponized” against Donald Trump. “So, I think they will continue to pound the airwaves with these falsehoods, verifiable falsehoods, because they trust that the public does not have the ability to fact check them.”
What makes this all the more sadder and more dangerous is that there’s a “news” network conservatives love that will pull out all the stops to help perpetuate the lies.
You can watch both segments below: John Eastman on the August 29, 2023 The Ingraham Angle is first; underneath is the MSNBC debunking from the August 30, 2023 Deadline: White House.
The first is that even the loudest and angriest GOP pundits on AM radio and on the various propaganda channels like Newsmax or Fox are starting to discuss the inevitable – that little Trump and his cronies are going to be convicted of multiple felonies, and that little Trump himself is looking at serious prison time. (He’s actually going to get his stated wish of winding up back in federal housing, but it may be somewhat different than he was thinking…)
The second is that angry Right Wingers are now throwing nonsense mud at President Biden and his family as furiously as they can, hoping they can fool voters into confusing the situations and winding up with a “plague on both their houses” response. It is sadly true that the endless repetitions of falsehoods like “Biden Crime Family” and “Hunter Biden Laptop” have confused enough poll respondents to foul various polls about voters’ feelings.
I’ll further note that Trump’s attempted public poses about this disintegrate when given any scrutiny. His pose of “You can’t prosecute me! I’m a presidential candidate! This is political persecution!!!” would mean that everyone could go rob a bank and then file to run for Mayor or Congressman or whatever, and tell prosecutors and the police that they’re now untouchable. His other pose of “I didn’t understand that I lost!” as well as “I didn’t understand that I couldn’t steal confidential documents” also translates to “I’m so unable to process basic information that I don’t know how elections work or how confidentiality works, but please vote for me anyway!”
Frankly, little Trump should be less concerned about whether authorities will establish a special wing of Leavenworth for him, and more worried that one or more of the judges is going to apply an appropriate sentencing punishment. Given Trump and his cronies’ utter disdain for the Constitution, for laws, and even for our democracy, it is important not only that he receive the applicable prison time, to be served consecutively and not concurrently, but also that he be stripped of all of the perquisites normally accorded to former presidents – including his Secret Service protection and his pension. This would make his imprisonment a much simpler matter, and given Trump’s sloughing off of the actual work to Mike Pence from 2017-2020, he frankly has never deserved those perquisites in the first place.
The entire current situation of lawlessness in the GOP sadly arises from Gerry Ford’s mistaken pardoning of Richard Nixon in 1974. Had Nixon been appropriately prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for his behavior then, the nation could have avoided multiple significant criminal scandals afterward – including the disasters of the Reagan, W and Pence White Houses. Instead, the criminals involved with the Nixon felonies learned they could get away with it. And many of those same people gleefully broke laws with Reagan and W and so on. With the current situation, the justice system at least has a chance to finally make a statement that nobody is above the law. This is actually positive moment for little Trump and his fans. They’re about to learn some very important lessons – about proper behavior and the consequences of misbehavior. And it’s long overdue that they do so.