Eastman’s pre-2020 career includes being chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, a position from which he e.g. expressed fervent support for Uganda’s anti-gay laws (life in prison for repeat offenders) and promoted most of the anti-gay rhetoric with which the 2010s made everyone familiar, including denouncing the LGBT equality movement as “fascist” and as promoting pedophilia – Eastman actually managed to gain himself significant prominence in wingnut circles also prior to 2020. He also attacked the 2015 marriage equality ruling as “illegitimate” and argued that a simple majority of states should be allowed to override Supreme Court decisions that Eastman thinks are “egregiously wrong”. There is a decent pre-2020 portrait of his efforts here.
The national public attention Eastman gained prior to the 2020 election was perhaps mostly the result of his August 2020 op-ed in which he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris was not a “natural-born citizen” (i.e. white Republican) and therefore ineligible to be vice president. Eastman’s attempted gambit was the irrelevant claim that neither of Harris’s parents was a permanent resident at the time of her birth. (It is notable that Eastman had previously dismissed admittedly silly concerns about 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz – who was born in Canada – as “silly”). The op-ed was instrumental in bringing Eastman to the attention of Jenna Ellis and the Trump camp, however.
Efforts to overturn the 2020 election
Eastman was a pivotal figure in the efforts by the Trump administration to overturn the 2020 election, starting with him being named to represent Trump in the December 2020 motion to intervene in Texas v. Pennsylvania, a laughable case filed by Ken Paxton on behalf of the state of Texas to annul the Pennsylvania election results. The case was of course quickly dismissed by the Supreme Court, but Eastman still got the time to write a brief full of bizarre claims, including the assertion that “[i]t is not necessary for [Trump] to prove that fraud occurred” but sufficient to show that elections “materially deviated” from the intent of state lawmakers.
Eastman was instrumental in shaping and disseminating the myth about “the vice president’s power to hold up the certification” of the presidential election, and he circulated a number of memos to that effect. On January 5, 2021, he completely falsely told Mike Pence that Pence had the constitutional authority to change the electoral vote to block the certification of the election, and he designed the six-point plan of action for Pence to throw out the electors from swing states Biden won that was sent to Mike Lee. He also, together with e.g. Rudy Giuliani and Trump himself, arranged online meetings with numerous legislators in a concentrated effort to convince them and instruct them on how to decertify their state’s election results. Eastman later tried to backpedal a bit from his memos and claims, but he also asserted that Pence didn’t follow through with blocking the election because Pence was in a conspiracy with the deep state to undermine Trump. Oh, and Eastman was demonstrably aware that his efforts were unlawful.
On January 6, 2021, Eastman gave a speech at the “Save America” rally prior to the insurrection, where he asserted, without a shred of evidence (or reason), that balloting machines contained “secret folders” that altered voting results. After the January 6 events, Eastman tried to argue that the Trump rally did not incite the siege of the Capitol, going instead full conspiracy theory with the desperately ridiculous claim that “a paramilitary group as well as antifa groups” planned and organized the event; in support for his delusions, he cited a Washington Post article (this one) that did not at all support his claim or even mention antifa. He also, in direct conflict with his other story, blamed Pence’s “inaction” for the attacks. In his subsequent meetings with the House Select Committee on the attacks, Eastman – somewhat understandably – invoked the Fifth Amendment.
But even after the January 6 riots, he continued to implore Vice President Pence and his counsel to violate the Electoral Count Act by delaying certification of the election. Indeed, by late 2021, Eastman was still trying to push state legislatures to “de-certify” their election results.
On March 28, 2022, federal judge David O. Carter found that Eastman, along with Trump, was more likely than not to have “dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021”, and the US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subsequently charged him with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the US, along with Trump. Eastman is presumably also a co-conspirator in the 2023 indictment of Trump for conspiring to defraud the US, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and he was, in August 2023, among the indictees in the prosecution related to the2020 Georgia election.
True to form, Trump and his campaign refused to pay Eastman for his services or reimburse his expenses. Nor did Trump, after Eastman meekly asked, in the aftermath of January 6, to be placed on the list of those to be given a presidential pardon before Trump’s term in office ended, grant him a pardon.
Diagnosis: It would be easy to categorize Eastman as merely a fervent fundie trying desperately to reconstruct the the law to serve his ideology and interests, but he does seem genuinely confused about basic questions of how reality hangs together. But despite being a dumb conspiracy theorist, Eastman has also managed to do more than almost anyone else to undermine democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law in the US.
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