Former President Donald Trump’s federal indictment makes clear that unnamed “Co-Conspirator 2” is former Chapman Law dean John Eastman.
“Co-Conspirator 2 told the crowd, ‘(A)ll we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at one o’clock he let the legislatures of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not. We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can’t get the answer to this question,’” the indictment that was unveiled Tuesday, Aug. 1 read.
Eastman uttered those words to a riled-up crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, standing beside Rudy Giuliani (who is clearly identifiable as Co-Conspirator 1).
The co-conspirators listed in the indictment are unindicted and unidentified, but the document described Co-Conspirator 2 with a level of specificity that it has to be Eastman.
Eastman’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s indictment.
Trump’s indictment cited, chapter and verse, from Eastman’s memos and emails that “functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful office in the entire world,” as Vice President Mike Pence’s attorney put it.
The indictment zeroes in on Eastman’s theory that the vice president had the power to accept, reject or send back for further investigation electoral votes from the states for the November 2020 presidential election, even though they were already certified by state legislators. Pence could kick back, or simply refuse to count, “contested” electoral votes for Joe Biden, and even declare Trump the winner, the infamous Eastman memos argue.
SEE: Trump charged by Justice Department for efforts to overturn 2020 presidential election loss
Eastman’s rationale was that courts made changes to how elections were conducted because of the pandemic, but that only state legislatures have that power (the Supreme Court recently said that’s wrong). He argued that states could send Trump electors in place of Biden electors and Pence could count them; Those “alternate slates” of electors became a key part of the plan, according to the indictment.
Eastman is fighting to hold onto his California law license amid charges of “dishonesty and moral turpitude,” but has not yet been charged with any crimes in connection with Trump.
The former Chapman dean has been asking for prayers, and $500,000 for his legal defense, on GiveSendGo.com/Eastman. He has raised more than $469,000 to date.
A timeline
The indictment closely traces Eastman/Co-Conspirator 2’s involvement in Trump’s attempts to change the election results in late 2020 and early 2021.
“On December 6, (Trump) and Co-Conspirator 2 called the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee to ensure that the plan was in motion,” the indictment says. “During the call, Co-Conspirator 2 told the Chairwoman that it was important for the RNC to help the Defendant’s Campaign gather electors in targeted states, and falsely represented to her that such electors’ votes would be used only if ongoing litigation in one of the states changed the results in the Defendant’s favor. After the RNC Chairwoman consulted the Campaign and heard that work on gathering electors was underway, she called and reported this information to (Trump), who responded approvingly.”
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On Dec. 23, 2020, Trump retweeted a memo titled “Operation ‘PENCE’ CARD,” which “falsely asserted that the Vice President could, among other things, unilaterally disqualify legitimate electors from six targeted states.” On the same day, “Co-Conspirator 2 circulated a two-page memorandum outlining a plan for the Vice President to unlawfully declare (Trump) the certified winner of the presidential election. In the memorandum, Co-Conspirator 2 claimed that seven states had transmitted two slates of electors and proposed that the Vice President announce that ‘because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States.’
“Next, Co-Conspirator 2 proposed steps that he acknowledged violated the (Electoral Count Act), advocating that, in the end, ‘Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.’ Just two months earlier, on October 11, Co-Conspirator 2 had taken the opposite position, writing that neither the Constitution nor the ECA provided the Vice President discretion in the counting of electoral votes, or permitted him to ‘make the determination on his own.’”
On Jan. 3, 2021, Eastman/Co-Conspirator 2 circulated a second memo that included a new plan where Pence would send the elector slates back to the state legislatures to determine which to count, the indictment says.
“On the morning of January 4, 2021, Co-Conspirator 2 called the Arizona House Speaker to urge him to use a majority of the legislature to decertify the state’s legitimate electors. Arizona’s validly ascertained electors had voted three weeks earlier and sent their votes to Congress, which was scheduled to count those votes in Biden’s favor in just two days’ time at the January 6 certification proceeding. When the Arizona House Speaker explained that state investigations had uncovered no evidence of substantial fraud in the state, Co-Conspirator 2 conceded that he ‘[didn’t] know enough about facts on the ground’ in Arizona, but nonetheless told the Arizona House Speaker to decertify and ‘let the courts sort it out.’ The Arizona House Speaker refused, stating that he would not ‘play with the oath’ he had taken to uphold the United States Constitution and Arizona law.”
That same day, a White House meeting was held with Trump, Pence and his attorney, “Co-Conspirator 2” and others to convince Pence of the righteousness of the plan, with Trump making “knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, ‘Bottom line …. We won every state.’”
“[Y]ou’re going to cause riots in the streets,” Pence’s aides told Eastman/Co-Conspirator 2, according to the indictment.
On Jan. 6, Trump selected Eastman/Co-Conspirator 2 to join Giuliani/Co-Conspirator 1 to warm up the crowd. Both “intensified pressure on the Vice President to fraudulently obstruct the certification proceeding” despite knowing their claims of election fraud were false, the indictment says.
And that night at 11:44 p.m., undeterred by the violence, Eastman/Co-Conspirator 2 emailed Pence’s attorney “advocating that the Vice President violate the law and seek further delay of the certification,” the indictment says. “Co-Conspirator 2 wrote, ‘I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation (of the Electoral Count Act) and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.”