In this episode, constitutional scholar John Eastman joins Jenny Beth Martin to expose how America’s justice system has been weaponized against conservatives and defenders of the Constitution. Eastman—who served as a Supreme Court clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and has argued over 200 constitutional cases—details his persecution by state and federal authorities for standing with President Donald Trump after the 2020 election. He shares the truth about his indictments in Georgia and Arizona, his California disbarment battle, and how these cases reveal a broader war on the rule of law. Eastman warns that the Constitution itself is on trial and urges Americans to stand firm against political lawfare threatening free speech, due process, and equal justice in the United States.
In this episode, constitutional scholar John Eastman joins Jenny Beth Martin to expose how America’s justice system has been weaponized against conservatives and defenders of the Constitution. Eastman—who served as a Supreme Court clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and has argued over 200 constitutional cases—details his persecution by state and federal authorities for standing with President Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
He shares the truth about his indictments in Georgia and Arizona, his California disbarment battle, and how these cases reveal a broader war on the rule of law. Eastman warns that the Constitution itself is on trial and urges Americans to stand firm against political lawfare threatening free speech, due process, and equal justice in the United States.
X/Twitter: @DrJohnEastman | @jennybethm
The Eastman Dilemma Film: https://www.madisonmediafund.org/eastman-dilemma/
Givesendgo: https://www.givesendgo.com/Eastman
John Eastman (00:00):
I get so angry at the Democrats complaining about President Trump getting indictments against James Comey or Letitia James. He's weaponizing the Department of Justice and I just want to say, what the heck do you think we've been dealing with the last four years?
Narrator (00:16):
Keeping our Republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world, but the title she is most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:48):
Today we are joined by John Eastman, who is a constitutional scholar. He's an attorney and he is a professor on the law, and I'm so excited for you to get to know a little bit about him. I've known John for several years. He has been persecuted from the Biden administration, but also from state and local governments around the country for standing with President Trump back in 2020. We're going to talk a little bit about that and then talk also about some of the constitutional legal issues that we're looking at today, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. John, thanks so much for joining me today.
John Eastman (01:26):
Jenny Beth, thanks for having me on and applaud to you and your audience and the membership and all that you've been doing to kind of keep America free and secure.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:37):
Well, thank you very much, John. Let's tell the audience a little bit about you. You're a scholar, you are a constitutional champion and you are a ferocious defender of constitutional rights. Give us a little bit of background about who you are.
John Eastman (01:55):
Well, I have both a PhD in the political philosophy of the American founding as well as a law degree from one of the top law schools in the country, the University of Chicago, and after my law school, I clerked for justice clearance Thomas at the Supreme Court of the United States. After that, I went to a major national law firm and when they wouldn't let me file a brief in support of the Boy Scouts, I left and created my own public interest law firm called the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. And I've been involved in about 200 major constitutional cases in the Supreme Court in the last quarter century. As a result, I was called by the Florida legislature to testify back in 2000 when there was that little kerfuffle over the Bush versus Gore election, and I think it's a
Jenny Beth Martin (02:43):
Little thing there,
John Eastman (02:44):
Little thing, and I think that was one of the reasons President Trump called on me in late November of 2020 to help design a strategy that would get the Supreme Court to look seriously at the allegations of illegality that were floating around in all of the swing states. I taught constitutional law for nearly a quarter century at Chapman University Fowler School of Law until they couldn't stand the fact that I'd represented President Trump and then also was the dean of the law school and continued to run my center for constitutional jurisprudence. Even though I'm confronted with an inactive bar license out in California, the Supreme Court of the United States is still letting me practice there.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:28):
Well, thank goodness the Supreme Court still is letting you practice. Let's jump in to some of what you just said. You no longer, you're no longer a professor at that university, you don't have your bar license in California and other horrible things have happened to you along with so many other people around the country from the persecution and the weaponization of government against Trump supporters. So tell about your story as much as you're able to without putting yourself in legal jeopardy.
John Eastman (04:01):
Well, I've been speaking publicly about all this stuff for a very long time, and the lawyers that I've got representing me, I've had 18 different actions we've been dealing with around the country. And of course when you're criminally indicted as I was in Georgia and in Arizona and I was an unindicted co-conspirator in DC and Jack Smith's indictment against President Trump, the first thing criminal defense lawyers tell you is that don't say anything because everything you say will be used against you. But it occurred to me very early and they came around to this view as well that these prosecutions had almost nothing to do with actual law. It was a political hatchet job, and if I wasn't speaking out publicly, I was seeding the main battlefield in the war we're in. So I've been speaking out publicly pretty vigorously about this, but I was unindicted co-conspirator number two in Jack Smith's case against the president.
John Eastman (04:57):
I was indicted, co-conspirator number three in Georgia by Fannie Willis. I was indicted in Arizona even though I had almost nothing to do with Arizona, certainly not any of the election challenges or the hearings down there. And then of course I've gone through what I think is probably the longest and most expensive barred disciplinary proceeding in history out in California. The trial went to over 10 weeks and we're still fighting it. There's a recommendation that I be disbarred that was issued by the California Bar Court and we are taking that up to the California Supreme Court because only they have the authority to actually disbarred. But the recommendation itself placed me on inactive status. So I might as well be disbarred because I'm not allowed to practice in any of the California courts or derivatively in any other trial court in the country except the Supreme Court said, well, thanks very much for letting us know. Let us know if it becomes final and then we'll decide what to do about it. But in the meantime, I'm still practicing in the US Supreme Court.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:03):
Wow, the case in Arizona and in Georgia. It looks like some good, well, I feel like every time I say this out loud, I feel like I've got to go knock on wood somewhere because I don't want to jinx it for you and the others who've been indicted, but it does seem like things may turn out a little bit better in Georgia. It all depends on if the state prosecutor's office somehow assigns a different prosecutor rather than Fannie Willis. And then didn't Arizona get referred back to have to go back to the grand jury?
John Eastman (06:44):
Yeah, so let me take these one by one. Of course. The Fannie Willis scandal down in Georgia was soap opera level, attention world over with her love affair with the special prosecutor she hired to handle the case. And as I've read, he never had ever handled the felony before and now he's given the biggest case in Georgia history and she paid him over $700,000 while he's paying for her to go on lavish trips with him to Aruba and cruises and to Napa wine tasting tours and all of that. So the judge found that one or the other of them had to be disqualified and he promptly resigned and then it went to the court of appeals and the court of appeals said, no, it takes two to tango, basically you're both disqualified. And then she appealed that to the Georgia Supreme Court and just a couple of weeks ago, the Georgia Supreme Court said declined to hear her appeal, although it waited eight months to do that.
John Eastman (07:48):
So we were sitting under the sword of Damocles waiting to see what was going to happen for another eight months. Now interestingly, after that decision, the case goes to the prosecuting attorney's counsel and then that group will decide whether to appoint a new prosecutor and if so, who and one of the other Democrat das in the state is just chomping at the bit to get the case and make her career off of it with the radical left Democrat base. But the prosecuting attorney's counsel a year ago, two years ago, Fannie Willis was disqualified from investigating one of the electors named Burt Jones. He was a state senator and he was running for Lieutenant Governor in 2022 and she attended an headline to fundraiser for his opponent. And so the court said, you can't do that, you're disqualified. So that one went up to the prosecuting attorney's counsel and last September they issued a ruling saying there's no crime here.
John Eastman (08:53):
This elector was doing the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, allows no crime, no recommendation of a new prosecutor, case dismissed and over. Well, that's exactly the same stuff I've been charged with. So last Monday, the prosecuting attorney's counsel asked for an extra four months to decide whether to appoint another prosecutor or not, and we filed a brief and immediately the next day say, look, you've already looked at all the relevant stuff. The decision ought to be the same. This case needs to go away. I think I began my brief with the line. Enough is enough. The court granted them a month out of the four months they had requested. So by November 14th we'll learn whether a special prosecutor has been appointed to decide to revive that case or drop it in Arizona. There are many moving parts, all of which are pointing in the right direction.
John Eastman (09:52):
Arizona is unique in the country for having an anti SLAPP statute that applies to criminal prosecutions. And let me explain that a little bit. Anti SLAPP SLAP stands for strategic litigation against public participation and it was a tool that was being used by say, big land developers. They would preemptively sue people who were complaining against their projects at the planning commission to try and silence them. And states started passing what were called anti SLAPP statutes. If you were on the receiving end of such a lawsuit trying to stop you from exercising your first amendment rights, you could bring a suit at the front end of the case and unless they could prove that your speech was not protected on the front end case had to get dismissed and they had to pay all your attorney's fees. Well, in 2022, Arizona with the elector's case in mind passed, expanded their anti SLAPP statute to cover criminal prosecutions and we filed an anti SLAPP motion.
John Eastman (10:57):
We were the first ones of the 18 criminal defendants to do so, and the judge ruled in our favor that we had met our initial burden of showing that the prosecution was likely motivated by an attempt to retaliate against or deter the exercise of our first amendment rights. And then the ball was going to shift to the attorney general to prove that wasn't what motivated her. Of course, that would open up all her internal communications, all of her outside communications with hard left advocacy groups, including one state United Democracy Center that she hired to prepare the prosecution strategy for her. That's the same group that filed the bar complaint against me in California. I mean, it's nonsense. Anyway, because she didn't want to open that door because you can imagine how juicy those communications are. She filed an appeal, a special action, it's called in Arizona to challenge the initial ruling.
John Eastman (11:55):
And while that appeal was pending, the judge also ordered that she had done a biased presentation to the grand jury and had to reman to a new grand jury to see if an unbiased presentation would lead to a new indictment or not. Unfortunately, he didn't dismiss the case. It's still pending, but she has to take it to a new grand jury. And a couple of weeks ago, the court of appeals declined to hear her appeal of that. And so she's now in a 30 day window to decide what to do. She could try and take an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, but I don't think they're going to take it up either. She could convene a new grand jury, but that's a months long process and if you get a fair grand jury, they'll likely throw this thing out. She could go to the trial court and say, alright, I'm just going to bring it on information without a grand jury indictment. And then she has to prove, demonstrate to the trial court that she had probable cause, which is going to be hard for her to do or she could drop it, but I don't think her leftist base would go along with that. It may be a career ending move for her, so we will see what happens.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:15):
Well, it may be a career ending move for her no matter what she does because if she appeals to her left wing base, then she's going to upset voters when it comes to her reelection and I think she's up for reelection next year. So she may survive a primary, but then she's got to worry about a general election as well. And I was in Arizona for Charlie Kirk's memorial. The tension and the emotion in that seat is much different than it was among the electorate there than it was
John Eastman (13:53):
She probably didn't even win in 2022, but that's a different conversation. Well,
Jenny Beth Martin (13:58):
Yeah, that is very true. John, one thing about the Georgia case, is there a right to a speedy trial because you guys sure are not getting one?
John Eastman (14:14):
We're not getting one. And in our opposition to their request for extension, we pointed that out, even cited an 11th circuit case which supervises the Georgia area, that presumptively violation of the constitutional right to a speedy trial. If you've gone more than a year and this has now gone two and a quarter years, right? There is confusion on the case law on whether you have to issue a demand for a speedy trial and if you haven't done so, whether the clock effectively stops. That's not what the Constitution says. Of course. And so we just put in and said, look, if you grant this long extension, given the amount of time, it's going to raise a serious risk of a violation of the speedy trial, right? And a speedy trial has to be dismissed. I mean dismissed with prejudice, you're done. So we we'll see. That's certainly, certainly one of the things. The other thing that's going on though last month in Michigan by a judge who had been appointed by the Hyperpartisan Governor, Democrat, governor, Democrat, judge dropped the case, dismissed the case against the Michigan electors saying there was no intent of crime here. They were exercising their constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances.
John Eastman (15:37):
What a courageous decision by that Democrat appointed judge given the hyperpartisan nature of these cases, and she did the right thing, she followed the law faithfully. None of these cases that should have been brought and Georgia's legislature last year approved a bill. It's now law in Georgia that if a case gets dismissed because the prosecutor was disqualified, then that county from where the prosecutor hails has to pay the attorney's fees of all the defendants, and with 18 of us for two and a half years been fighting this. You could imagine that's going to be a pretty healthy tab on Atlanta if this thing gets dismissed as it should.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:23):
Well, it absolutely should and it will be a very healthy cost for them, but it's one that they should absolutely incur if it gets dismissed. It's completely wrong and unfair. One of the people indicted in Georgia is a lady who had been a school teacher. She's from Coffee County, she has moved to Texas, she's had health issues. She has not been able to get a job because of the indictment hanging over her head. So she should sort of stuck in this horrible purgatory state. She couldn't even get a job, if I remember properly, she couldn't even get a job at a Walmart because she wasn't passing the criminal background check for a Walmart, even though she has not been prosecuted and not found guilty yet
John Eastman (17:12):
So much for innocent until proven guilty. Right?
Jenny Beth Martin (17:15):
Absolutely.
John Eastman (17:15):
No, I'm dealing with the same thing. I can't get my TSA pre-check renewed. I can't get my concealed carry permit renewed. All of these things, not just if you've been convicted of a felony, that makes sense, but if you're under indictment for a felony, you've got all these collateral consequences
Jenny Beth Martin (17:35):
That doesn't even make sense. They should want you as somebody who has been indicted to go ahead and have the TSA pre-check because then they can much more closely track as you're moving around the country if they choose to do so.
John Eastman (17:50):
So
Jenny Beth Martin (17:51):
Saying that you can't get that renewed, it is craziness. Mike Roman has been indicted in Wisconsin in Georgia and Arizona. I don't think he was part of the Michigan, Michigan roundup, but he's been indicted. He wasn't an electorate. He was working on the campaign and just conveying information and trying to make sure people understood what they could and couldn't do.
John Eastman (18:19):
Mike's a great example. I mean look, in 1960 in Hawaii, there was a contested election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was certified as the winner on election night. They challenged that with a court case. The court case was still pending when the electors by law had to meet and cast their votes. And the reason that's so significant is because the Constitution mandates that all electoral votes have to be cast on the same day. And there's a very serious question if they're not cast on the same day because they hadn't yet been certified and they subsequently win the legal challenge and get certified, whether they can legitimately be counted. So electors then and throughout our history have met on the same day, while there were still election challenges pending, and all Mike Roman did and Ken Chesbro was recommend that the electors in the contested states where there were still election challenges pending cast their votes in order to preserve those election challenges.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:20):
And it's really important to understand that the election happened in November. That vote happens in December, and the election challenges still were ongoing at the beginning of December when that vote happened. Doesn't that vote happen on December 6th or something?
John Eastman (19:36):
December 14th, this past year,
Jenny Beth Martin (19:37):
14th.
John Eastman (19:39):
And look in Georgia, which one of the most thorough election challenges Cleta Mitchell, my good friend, was involved in it as were a number of others, including
Jenny Beth Martin (19:49):
Me.
John Eastman (19:49):
Yeah, including you. That one hadn't even gotten a judge appointed. We went a whole month without a judge appointed for that case.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:55):
Yeah, that's right. We didn't get a judge appointed until after the new year. Even though the state law specifies that a judge must be appointed immediately, immediately means immediately. Maybe it means wait from Friday night until Monday morning, but immediately,
John Eastman (20:11):
Certainly not a month. And when the order came down that they'd finally appointed a judge, it was January 4th when we got
Jenny Beth Martin (20:19):
It. Yes.
John Eastman (20:19):
And he set the original status conference for that Friday, two days after the joint session of Congress met and ended the matter. So yeah, no, it was the gamesmanship that was being played. It was just preposterous. And so anybody that dared raise ahead and challenged said, this is not right, are being criminally prosecuted. And even if at the end of the day you don't get convicted, the process is the punishment as we're seeing, and Kathy that you're talking about earlier, Misty Hampton or Floyd, all of these people, I mean, I happen to have a national platform where I can raise money to help pay for this. They don't. It's depleting their resources, it's making it difficult, if not impossible to get new employment. I mean, this is an outrage. And I get so angry at the Democrats complaining about President Trump getting indictments against James Comey or Letitia James. He's weaponizing the Department of Justice. And I just want to say, what the heck do you think we've been dealing with the last four years? And so holding people accountable for the weaponization they did is not weaponization, but accountability and justice.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:35):
That is exactly right. And every one of you involved in these cases around the country, you are exercising your first amendment right. You have the right to petition a government, you have the right to speak out, you have the right to disagree, you have the right to assemble. And there was Supreme Court precedent that electors needed to have an alternative slate if a court case was successful. So all of this was true around the entire country and the states that have been affected in targeting people. We can go to court, it's novel case, case law that they're trying to take on in Georgia, tying it all to a rico, which makes it even more difficult for you to have a speedy trial. How are you going to pull the president of the United States into the rico, the RICO case? The whole thing just makes me angry. I'm not an attorney, but boy, it just makes me mad.
John Eastman (22:37):
I mean, think about what RICO is racketeering. It was a statute designed to go after the mob and organized crime,
Jenny Beth Martin (22:43):
Right?
John Eastman (22:44):
They're calling election challengers part of an organized crime. Anybody, I tell this at speeches, I said, how many of you contacted your legislator to complain about the way the election was conducted? And they all raised their hands. I said, welcome to the conspiracy. You could be named in Georgia as well, or the statute that was brought against the J Sixers and President Trump in dc. It's the old mob witness intimidation statute. It adds a 20 year felony on top of everything else. If you intimidate a witness who's turning state's evidence against the mob, they expanded that statute after Enron to go after people that destroy all the documents to make it obstructed a prosecution to them. And then they tried to distort that anti mob statute to apply to the J Sixers, who by and large were protesting what they saw as illegality in the election. Now, some of the knuckleheads ended up going in and breaking windows, and those are misdemeanor trespass crimes that we started treating like they were insurrections and putting people away for 20 to 30 years to life. I mean, this was insane. Look at the people that actually engaged in insurrection, blocked off 10 square blocks of Portland and said, no go zones, firebombed federal facilities locked the doors so the people inside, while those things were set, a fire couldn't get out and they all got either slap on the wrist or were given compensation.
John Eastman (24:18):
The double standard that has been applied is destroying the rule of law in this country. And I think what President Trump is trying to do and the Department of Justice and the FBI are trying to do is hold people that blew through those guardrails, hold them accountable for what they've done to this country so that people will have a real strong message that we ought not to be acting like that in the future.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:42):
Yeah, I think that that is exactly what he's trying to do. So let me ask you two questions. The first one is what do you think is the bigger precedent that is being set from the weaponization against you? And then let's talk about a little bit more after you answer that, about the differences between what you've experienced and what Comey and Leticia James are accused of having done. So what is a bigger precedent that is at risk right now?
John Eastman (25:10):
Well, the big precedent, and you don't need my words on this, that David Brock, one of the founders of the 65 Project, which is the group bringing all these bar complaints, he said in an interview with Aios Magazine, our goal is not just to get all these lawyers disbarred, but to make them so toxic in their firms and their communities that lawyers won't ever take on these kind of cases again. Now, that was a shot across the bow to anybody that dared stand up against the leftist hegemonic narrative is going to have their lives destroyed, their careers ended, their family put through hell, and to try and chill people away from doing what has always been a noble aspiration of the profession. We used to hold John Adams up on a pedestal for representing the British soldiers in the Boston massacre, and they're threatening that noble aspiration that everybody's entitled to a lawyer and that we apply equally the law.
John Eastman (26:10):
They want to end that they want to create a narrative. And anybody that dares challenge that narrative will be destroyed. It's Orwellian. It's if you don't come to the view that we say two plus two is five, and you repeat that lie, not only that, but come to believe that lie, then we're going to destroy you. And Orwell predicted it in his book 1984. He was about 40 years off, but this is what they're trying to do and it is a Marxist. We are in power. What we say goes, and you're not allowed to even challenge it. And I'll give you two great examples in my BARR trial out in California, one of the things is you said there was illegality in the election and you continued to say so even after Bill Barr said there's no evidence of fraud. Well, I'm sorry. Bill Barr didn't say that under oath.
John Eastman (27:00):
He was talking about fraud and not illegality. He apparently didn't conduct the investigations that he claimed to have conducted. I'm supposed to just bend the knee because Bill Barr in an unsworn interview with a news organization says the opposite when I had all the evidence that he was wrong. The second thing they said is in relation to the Georgia case, we were just talking about, I filed a federal action after a month saying, you're violating due process by not even giving as a judge. And here's one of the questions they asked me. When the other side put in an expert contradicting your expert, why didn't you withdraw the case? I'm like, if you guys never done trial litigation before, I've not been involved with one when there were competing experts on both sides. And that's the whole point of the judicial system is to resolve the competing claims. I was supposed to just say, oh, okay, well, they say the opposite, so I should just drop everything because the narrative is the thing. I mean, it's really stunning.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:01):
Yeah, it is so stupid. And John, what you're essentially saying when, let me see if I, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are essentially saying that if this stands and the intimidate attorneys and prevent attorneys from being willing to take on cases that may not be politically correct or may not be very favorable with the court of public opinion, that that would be really overturning 250 years of precedent and this country going all the way back to Boston when John Adams, one of our founders who helped write the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution was defending British soldiers who had killed American colonists. Is that correct? That's
John Eastman (28:48):
Correct. And that's what they
Jenny Beth Martin (28:49):
Wanted. Shattering 200. And as we head into the 250th anniversary, it's shattering 250 years of precedent.
John Eastman (28:56):
Well, that's right. And they're shredding the first amendment, they're shredding the fourth Amendment, the fifth Amendment, the sixth Amendment, the eighth amendment. When you get these ridiculous fines like have been issued against President Trump or Rudy Giuliani and they don't care. The whole point here is a uniparty view of things. And once the uniparty has decided what the correct answer is, and it doesn't matter what it is, whether 50-year-old men are exposing themselves in your public pool locker rooms or teenage boys competing against teenage girls on swim meets or track meets, or you complain about pornography and accessible to your sixth graders in the public school libraries, anytime you go against the narrative that the uniparty has said is truth gospel and you're not allowed to question it, they're going to go after you. And they're trying to scare lawyers away from taking on those cases. It's not just election stuff. It's anytime you're challenging a third rail and the third rail is no longer one issue, abortion, it's every major issue is now treated as if it's a third rail that you're not allowed to push back against the government narrative. That's not freedom, that's despotism. And the day we allow that to take root and not be challenged is the day we cease to be a self-governing people and we become sheep subjects to a tyrannical government.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:24):
Absolutely. And when our country was attacked on our own soil on nine 11, the accused terrorist and the people who were involved in that were able to get attorneys and as a country we did not blackball them and say they could no longer practice law and shun them from society. We understood that that was part of what makes, that's why we love our country so much. And
John Eastman (30:53):
Well, it wasn't just that they could get attorneys. I mean every major law firm in the country was falling over each other trying to get first in line to represent them. And the folks in Guantanamo Bay, I remember Erwin Shamsky out here in California filed a habeas corpus petition in Los Angeles. Now, habeas corpus means produce the body. So we're fighting like crazy to keep these terrorists out of our country and he wants to have 'em all down in Guantanamo Bay brought to the courtroom in Los Angeles. I mean, and none of those lawyers are facing any charges for taking on those crazy cases. They were getting awards for it, but that's again double standard. I get what's the old line? If they didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all. But the double standard is just getting so ridiculous and you see it now playing out.
John Eastman (31:43):
Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice by going after his opponents. Well, those opponents breached the rule of law by going after him, and they completely upended two and a half centuries of our history about things you don't do. By the way, one of the most important speeches and it's easily findable on the internet, is a 1940 speech given by newly appointed Attorney General Robert Jackson. And he gave a speech at the annual conference of all the US attorneys, and he warned them against the temptation of finding people they don't like and then scouring the law books to find statutes that they could go at them with that herein lies the greatest risk of abuse of the criminal justice system. What was Jackson's warning in 1940 has unfortunately become a playbook by the left. And if we don't put the lid back on this Pandora's box or put this genie back in the bottle, we will destroy the notion of our adversarial system of
Jenny Beth Martin (32:50):
Justice. Absolutely. John, would you say that the Constitution itself is on trial and your case and the other elector related cases?
John Eastman (33:01):
I do. I mean, in my California bar for example, we've got a major part of our appeal to the California Supreme Court is the first amendment and due process violations. I mean, one of the cornerstones of due process is an impartial adjudicator, an impartial judge. You can't watch the hearings or read the transcripts and think this was even remotely an unpassed judge. I mean it was an outrage. But the First amendment, I mean they cite the statutes or the Supreme Court precedent that they lawyers get First Amendment protections too. And then they just say, but not in this case. I mean it just because he spoke a lie. And how do we know it was a lie? Because the New York Times said there was nothing wrong with the election or Bill Barr said there was nothing wrong with the election. And whatever evidence I marshaled to prove that that was not true, she just ignored.
John Eastman (33:58):
And so the Constitution's protection First Amendment free speech, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, we do that by filing court cases. We do that by holding rallies. We do that by sending missives to our legislative and elected officials. This is vintage constitutional protection that they want to eliminate. They want to shut the microphone off of people speaking at a school board against outrageous policies. They want us to just kind of bend our knees, act like little sheep and get patted on the head and think everything is fine when it's not. And our constitution is there to stand in the way of this. But as James Madison at once said, it's just a parchment barrier. If the people don't stand up to defend those rights, we'll lose 'em. Or Ronald Reagan, our freedom is just about one generation away and it requires every one of us to stand up and defend them. And Jenny Beth, you are doing that with your organization. One of the reasons I'm standing up as strong as I can is so that what we pass on to our kids and grandkids is not something that is much less free, much less secure than we inherited from our parents and forebearers.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:12):
And I appreciate the fact that you were doing that and that you've been so fearless and that you have found courage deep inside of yourself to continue to be able to do this because you have been under constant attack for over four years now. How is what you experienced, what President Trump experienced, what the J six defendant defendants and also all the other electors, how is all of that different than what we are seeing right now from the indictments with James Comey and Leticia James?
John Eastman (35:48):
So the biggest difference seems to me is that they pulled a Lati Berea move on Trump and me and the electors, LATI Berea was Stalin's chief of Secret Police, and he famously said, show me the man and I'll show you the crime. In other words, I can distort our laws to go after anybody I want. And what we saw by Alvin Bragg and Letitia James in New York, Ani Willis in Georgia, or Jack Smith in DC against President Trump or the cases they've distorted the laws, they've stretched them beyond recognition to use them to go after their political opponents. The difference between that and what's now happening with Letitia James and James Comey, and hopefully in relatively short order a lot more, is these guys violated clearly established laws that anybody else that would've violated them would've already been prosecuted. We didn't need to stretch the law against mortgage fraud to go after Letitia James. We don't need to stretch the law against committing perjury before Congress to file the indictment against James Comey. Those are long established laws, not vague and stretchable that they violated. And so I think that's the key difference. Distort the law to go after your political opponents or faithfully apply the law against people that have clearly violated it.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:18):
Now, what happens if we don't hold people accountable when they're violating the law?
John Eastman (37:26):
Yeah, so I think Rudy Giuliani answered this question when he was mayor of New York, the broken windows strategy, if you let go of the petty crimes, you'll end up with much bigger crimes. And we don't have just petty crimes here. We already have much bigger crimes. But if you let it go unanswered, people get emboldened to do it again with impunity and with so much at stake. I mean, how much money is spent on a presidential election every four years? What a billion, a $2 billion or something? Now, when you add all the independent expenditures, when you've got that much money at stake, are you really telling me that somebody's not going to cut a few corners and cheat a little bit in order to protect their 2 billion investment? And if you don't hold them accountable, that's what standard will become. And the question is, we'll be electing people who cheated the best and the most rather than having a free and fair election.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:23):
That is so very important. And John, I didn't see it as eloquently or cite studies the way that Rudy Giuliani did, although I have used the same study when talking about the border, the broken Windows theory. But one of the things that I said when I personally and my organizations were targeted by the IRS, along with hundreds of other organizations around the country and probably thousands of other individuals, I said then if they don't hold anyone accountable, it is going to embolden people in government to weaponize the government further against others. And that is exactly what we saw happen under the Biden administration. And as we saw it happening, and in fact, I think that we saw it happening even under the first Trump administration, not by Trump, but by people who work in the government who thought that they were just above the law and could accuse Trump, Trump of crimes, makeup, makeup stories, and all the things that the FBI did with Russia, Russia, Russia.
Jenny Beth Martin (39:39):
As that would happen, I just kept going. Part of the reason this is happening is because they think they can get away with it. They got away with it when they attacked us, the FBI never, never once even interviewed me and to my knowledge, none of us who were actually the victims of the crime, I don't understand how there can be victims of a crime, congressional hearings. And there are victims and Inspector General who has said that there were crimes and problems committed and weaponization was happening and the FBI never even talked to any of us. I don't understand how that is even possible.
John Eastman (40:18):
And as you know, I represented true the vote. I represented National Organization for Marriage. I testified in Congress on that IRS scandal. But tell me whether Lois Lerner paid any penalty at all. No, she retired with full benefit, benefit and pension.
John Eastman (40:32):
It was an outrage, the notion, the lies, the lawyers that were representing them filing blatant lies in court proceedings. I'll give you another example from this double standard from my California bar matter. One of the central issues in my case and my recommendations was the unconstitutionality of the Electoral Count Act. It's an open question of constitutional law. The Supreme Court has never weighed in, no court in fact has ever weighed in the bar Lawyers said that I continued to insist it was unconstitutional after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a claim of its unconstitutionality that was false. And then they corrected it and said, oh, it wasn't the DC circuit, it was the trial court in DC. That was also false because the electoral count act wasn't even at issue. They doctored the quotation to stick in electoral count act from the various state statutes that were at issue in the case.
John Eastman (41:29):
We called them on that. And instead of withdrawing and confessing error and apologizing, they'd left it alone and the judge repeated the false doctored quotation in the opinion recommending disbarment against me. So they just lie with impunity and you just want to shake their heads and say, what is the matter with you people and why isn't anybody being held accountable? You look at the Department of Justice lawyers down in Louisiana that had set up anonymous Twitter accounts to leak information about a criminal prosecution on stuff that was under seal. You look at the criminal investigation against Ted Jones, Ted Stevens up in Alaska to take him out, that was completely fabricated. You look at the things that Andrew Weissman did that brought down Arthur Anderson or Jack Smith, all of these things and nobody's held accountable. And then the next round they get hired again and promoted.
John Eastman (42:28):
You look at the guy that helped manufacture the phony kidnapping up against Governor Whitmer in Michigan and then gets promoted to head the DC field office and very likely ran the same type of operation on January 6th. And what Trump is doing, and it's driving the left and the Rhino Republican right bonkers is shining a light on the corruption that has infected every level of our government, and particularly in dc. And you're right, it was not just during the Biden and Obama administrations, but this deep state continued to do it while Reagan was the head of the, sorry. Well, Trump was the head of the executive branch as if the American people's choice of a new executive department head as president didn't matter anymore. So we do have a problem of accountability within the government agencies. And I think one of the things that's so significant about what President Trump is doing now that he was not I think prepared to do in the first administration is to take that on.
John Eastman (43:31):
I mean, he perhaps naively believed that people that are hired to work for the executive branch understand that their job is to fulfill the agenda of the executive branch rather than obstruct it. And I think as bad as the election loss in 2020 was, particularly if it was stolen, what it gave President Trump the opportunity to do and his inner circle team, the opportunity to do in those four years of wilderness is to come loaded for bear ready with the T's crossed and then i's dotted on what we've been seeing happening ever since January 20th, 2025. And it's been amazing watching them and with their full preparation on how to deal with the onslaught of attacks against them. And they're weathering it unbelievably well.
Jenny Beth Martin (44:26):
They really are. And I am just so proud of the work that they are doing right now. And of course, Comey and Lettisha James and anyone else who may wind up being indicted, they have the right to being presumed innocent until proven guilty. They're going to have a trial. We'll see if they get a fair, unbiased jury and their trial who looks at the law and doesn't insert their own political beliefs into the trial. But this is how it is supposed to work. And we have to make sure that we are not having constant weaponization of government and that we're not going after every single previous president. And I think that this will help send that message to all bureaucrats that you better be doing what you're supposed to be doing. You better be following the law and you don't go weaponizing the government against people because if you do, then if you do it against your political opponents, then your political opponents may come in and look for things that you've done wrong when you clearly or allegedly have clearly violated the law and hold you to the same standard you held them to.
John Eastman (45:49):
There are a couple of things here. One down in Georgia I was given a hundred thousand dollars bond to be able to be released. James Comey was released on his own recognizance. Now granted the charges against him thus far are relatively minor compared to the racketeering charges down in Georgia. But the prosecutors didn't go scorched earth on him. I suspect there are other dominoes yet to fall on nationwide conspiracy and what have you, but he's released on his own recognizance. He didn't even have to put up a dime for bond. And he probably doesn't have anything like the conditions we have imposed upon us down there. But the second thing, and this is a very serious concern, that if the people are prosecuted while Trump is in office, doesn't that just escalate it? And we become perpetual tit for tat every four years we get a new round going against the other.
John Eastman (46:46):
And I think that's a legitimate concern. But I've come down on the opposite side of that question for a very important reason. And that is I think if the people are not held accountable, they'll do it again. And the example I like to give folks is when they pass the independent prosecutor law after the Watergate scandal, and then it started being used against Reagan and a lot of top Reagan officials and all the Democrats were cheering. And then a half a decade later when it starts getting used against Bill Clinton, they realized this is not a good idea and they got rid of it. And I think unfortunately, we're at the point where if they don't suffer some of the same adverse consequences that they've been imposing on the rest of, in my view with much greater warrant because as I said earlier, they've violated clearly and long established laws. If they don't suffer the consequences for that, then they'll just do it again. And for us not to do that is like unilateral disarmament. You've got to hold them accountable and maybe they'll see the light and say, we came to a precipice here and we decided to back away from it and not drop the country over the cliff.
Jenny Beth Martin (47:58):
That's right. And if what we were seeing, I think that you and I both are intellectually honest enough to say that if what we were seeing was stretching the law using novel legal theories that have never been used before, applying some obscure portion of a bizarre law saying, oh, things that you did were related to this. Somehow if you connect like a hundred different dots together, you and I both would be going, wait, the law has to be applied fairly. And that is what's happening right now in these two particular cases with Comey and Leticia James. It seems to be that there's very clear evidence to bring it forward to get the indictment and for it to go forward to trial. And we'll just have to see how it plays out. But I think you and I both would be saying if there's stretching the law and turning the law into a weird pretzel, we'd have an issue with that as well.
John Eastman (49:04):
Yeah, no, I think that's right. Look, you look at what they did to Trump up in, I still don't know what crimes he violated on that because I guess they came up with the perfect crime. It was either a campaign expenditure that should have been reported, this alleged payment to keep Stormy Daniels quiet, right? If it advanced his campaign, it should have been a campaign expenditure and it was a misdemeanor false reporting on a business record that turned into a felony. It was a campaign violation, but if he had used campaign money to pay that personal expense, they would've been prosecuting him for using the campaign funds. So I guess it's the perfect crime. He can be prosecuted if he did use campaign funds and he can be prosecuted if he didn't damage. That was such a distortion. But the actual false reporting of campaign expenditures that occurred with the millions of dollars laundered from Hilly Clinton's campaign through her law firm, Perkins Coy reported as legal compliance when it had nothing to do with legal compliance.
John Eastman (50:17):
They hired a former British spy with a Russia asset to create a phony dossier used after doctoring documents to get FISA warrants disposed on the political campaign. And that got a little slap on the wrist fine rather than any criminal charges. So the people that committed actual crimes are getting off scot-free and those that didn't do anything wrong or having crimes or statutes distorted to try and reach them and even changing the statute of limitations after the fact to be able to go after somebody. But this is the abuse of the legal system that we've watched for the last four years. And like I said before, if the people that did that are not held accountable beyond, by the way, Kevin Kleinsmith, the guy that doctored the document to the FISA court, he was suspended, had his license suspended for a year, but that order came down in September and it was applied retroactively to the prior August, which meant by the time the suspension order came down, his time of suspension had already expired. I mean, you can't sell this script to Hollywood. It's so implausible, and we're watching it before our very eyes.
Jenny Beth Martin (51:29):
Yeah, we really are. John, if there was one thing that, or maybe it's more than one thing, but something that you could say directly to former President Biden or to James Comey and Leticia James, what would it be?
John Eastman (51:42):
Shame on you for doing what you've done. You need to be held accountable for it, and until you are other colleagues following in, your footsteps are going to have an incentive to do it again. So be prepared for full accountability for the abuse of our legal system that you did.
Jenny Beth Martin (52:02):
That's very good. I want to completely shift gears, but before I completely shift gears, let me just ask you two things. I should have asked this at the very top. If people want to donate to your legal defense fund, where can they do that? And also, isn't there a documentary that is out about what's happened to you and where can people find that?
John Eastman (52:26):
Sure. So the Legal Defense Fund is give send go.com/eastman, and it's a lovely website. People can send money and we need it. People can send prayers and my wife and I read 'em, they're heartwarming. We also use it as a bit of an update blog. I would encourage people to visit it and go to update 43 and read the article that my children wrote in defense of their dad, be sitting down. It'll bring tears to your eyes so you can see the impact this is having on our family and how they have rallied to the cause as well. Update 43, give send go.com/eastman. And then Hollywood made a documentary about this called the Eastman Dilemma Law Fair or Justice, and it's currently available for free streaming@madisonmediafund.org. It'll be right on the front page there, or you can just Madison media fund.org/eastman dilemma and take you right it.
Jenny Beth Martin (53:27):
Okay, very good. And then for that documentary, we have guides for how you can throw a house party to watch a documentary. The guides are, I don't know if we've got one that is completely generic or not. It may be related to a different film, but the point is, if you're listening and you want to watch this and invite some friends, we've got a guide and instructions. You may have to ignore the movie that it's about and just understand it would be about this documentary with John Eastman to help you do that. And I think it's a good idea to make sure people are watching the documentary and understand what happened to him and why it is so important, and especially if they're not paying attention, those on the audience. You're paying attention. You're listening to the news. You've probably been tracking all these indictments for the last several years, but there are people around the country who just haven't been. It's important for them to see what's happened to people like John Eastman and how it really is a lot different than what we're seeing from Comey and Leticia James right now,
John Eastman (54:38):
And let me add this. They can get one of their local churches or the public center at the local library, get a group of 40 or 50 people, make a nice fun pizza and soda event out of it. If they do that, contact you, Jenny Beth, and you can put 'em in touch with me. I will come in via Zoom at the end of the movie and do question and answer for a bit.
Jenny Beth Martin (55:03):
Oh, that is great. So if you get a gathering together more than just a couple people at your house, he's going to join you by Zoom and answer questions. I think that is a win-win for everyone. So you guys host house or a movie watching party, watch this movie and then let me know that you're doing it. You can always shoot me an email at Jenny dot beth@teapartypatriots.org, and we will connect you with John Eastman. Wow. This conversation with John Eastman is so good that we're going to break it into two parts. So we're going to end right now, and then next week we'll join with a second part of the conversation. Before we end, I encourage you to go to his Gibson Go page and make a donation to his legal defense fund. As you can tell, John Eastman has been through all sorts of agony from the weaponization of government at the federal, state, and local level. That Gibson Go Page again is give send go.com/eastman gibson go.com/eastman. And be sure to join us next week for the second part of this very informative conversation.
Narrator (56:11):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (56:31):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.