Trump Lawyer John Eastman Steps On Rake, Slips On Banana Peel, Lights Himself On Fire At Ninth Circuit

Wow, a normal person would be so embarrassed right now!

John Eastman, Trump's Keystone Coup lawyer, is such a supernova of dipshittery that it's hard to believe it's not a bit. Just HOW can one lawyer keep coming up with new ways to be such a goddamn fuckup? When he's not plotting to overthrow democracy by dint of cosplay electors, he's demanding to deliver a lecture on constitutional law to the FBI agents who show up with a warrant for his phone. When he's not huddled up with a Supreme Court justice's wife plotting the overthrow of democracy, he's ginning up garbage lawsuits with his client in an attempt to obstruct Congress. Let no one say the man doesn't hustle — even if his hustle is one that puts him at the center of multiple federal, state, and congressional investigations.

With that in mind, let's try to summarize Eastman's week in federal court without DYING OF CRINGE, shall we?

It started on the evening of Thursday, October 27, when John Eastman's lawyers busted into the courtroom of US District Judge David Carter and said , "Hey, you know how you said that our client did crimes with Donald Trump and had to disclose eight more emails to the House January 6 Select Committee? Well, we think you're full of shit, so we'd like you to reconsider, 'kay?" (Your Wonkette is paraphrasing slightly.)

See, on October 19, i.e. EIGHT DAYS BEFORE October 27, Judge Carter held that the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege applied to eight emails the supergenius law professor had sent from his work account at Chapman University. In the emails, Trump's lawyers admitted not only that the election suit in Georgia was being filed solely to give the Republican state Legislature an excuse to recast the state's electoral votes for Trump, but also that Trump had actual knowledge that the data he was citing to support his claims of fraud was bullshit. And so, finding that Trump and Eastman were doing crimes together, the court ordered Eastman to turn the emails over to the committee by 2 p.m. Pacific Time on October 28.

Now, there was a time for Eastman's lawyers to appeal Judge Carter's ruling, and that time was NOT on October 28. Nevertheless, on Friday, October 28, at 11: 48 a.m., just 2 hours and 12 minutes before the deadline to turn over the emails, Eastman docketed an emergency motion at the Ninth Circuit to stay the production order pending appeal, mumbling something about his lawyers being on vacation or some such. Which is very much not the court's problem! He also made one more pass at Judge Carter, but SHOCKER, no one rode to the rescue, and so at 2: 04 — LATE! — he emailed a Dropbox link with a plaintive request that the committee pretend he'd actually gotten a stay and refrain from looking at the emails. To which the committee said, "LOL, get bent, asshole." (We are paraphrasing again.)

Eastman then filed another request for stay with the Ninth Circuit, insisting that, even though the committee had seen the emails, the issue wasn't moot, because the court could still order Congress to delete them (maybe setting fire to their laptops for good measure!) and pretend the whole thing never happened. Which is both stupid and probably illegal due to separation of powers issues.

In their response to the court, the committee attached Eastman's email containing the Dropbox link as an exhibit.

Wait for it ...

Almost immediately, Politico published the emails. Because John Eastman's fuckwit lawyers hadn't disabled the Dropbox link! So now, the messages they fought for a year to keep under wraps are out in public — an Olympic feat of self-inflicted dick-kicking.

“The point is to have the court say that probably the election was void, which ought to be enough to prevent the Senate from counting the Biden electoral votes from Georgia, right?” Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro emailed Eastman and several Trump lawyers on the morning of December 31, 2020, making it clear that the purpose of the Georgia litigation wasn't to win, but to provide a pretext for political ratfucking. “Merely having this case pending before the Supreme Court, not ruled on, might be enough to delay consideration of Georgia, particularly if [Mike] Pence has the legal ability and will to insert himself, at least enough to win delay.”

"We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in some legitimate doubt,” he went on. “Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable opinion by Jan. 6 which might hold up the Georgia account is from Thomas — do you agree Prof. Eastman?”

Indeed, Prof. Eastman, a former law clerk for Justice Thomas who was in close contact with Thomas's wife Ginni, did agree!

“If the court were to give us ‘likely,’ that may be enough to kick the Georgia legislature into gear, because I’ve been getting a lot of calls from them indicating that they’re leaning that way,” Eastman piped up cheerfully.

Later in the day, he admitted in writing that Trump had actual knowledge that the claims about deceased and fraudulent votes in Georgia were false, even though he eventually went on to sign the document anyway: "Although the president signed a verification for that back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate. And I have no doubt that an aggressive DA or US Atty someplace will go after both the President and his lawyers once all the dust settles on this.”

Not a great look!

The astute observer will note that this would appear to make Eastman's appeal to the Ninth Circuit even more moot than before. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the argument that the appellate court can claw back those emails is now deader than the parrot in the proverbial Monty Python sketch. But our hero and his razzmatazz legal team have an answer for that and it is ...

 Are you ready? 

 Like, seriously, you might want to sit down for this one... 

THEY WANT THE APPEALS COURT TO VACATE JUDGE CARTER'S RULING THAT THE CRIME FRAUD EXCEPTION APPLIES TO THE CONTESTED EMAILS.

Look, as a lawyer, I cannot stress to you enough how brain-meltingly stupid this is. They're citing  US v. Munsingwear  , the OG case you read in law school for something called vacatur . The idea is basically that if a case becomes moot on appeal, then the lower court's holding should be vacated. It wouldn't make any sense here anyway, since the eight emails were part of thousands of emails on which the trial court ruled, and despite Eastman's whining that "a 'crime-fraud' privilege finding carries much of the stigma of a criminal conviction with none of the constitutional protections," there's no danger of a bad precedent or unjust penalty. But more importantly, the party seeking relief cannot bear any responsibility for the mooting of his case. And Eastman's lawyers sitting there with their thumbs up their asses for a week, then racing to the courthouse with a bunch of doomed (not to say bad faith) emergency motions, and then failing to disable the Dropbox link after the emails had been downloaded are not indicia of what we would call CLEAN HANDS.

In summary and in conclusion, sad trombone, womp womp, go the fuck home and think about what you did, you pack of incompetent twits.

[ Politico / Eastman v. Thompson Trial Docket via Court Listener]

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