#2798: John Eastman

John Charles Eastman is a lawyer, conspiracy theorist, co-conspirator in the federal indictments brought against Trump over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the certification of the election results, and founding director of the Claremont Institute-affiliated Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence – a corollary of Badger’s law, we suppose. Eastman has himself been criminally indicted and recommended for disbarment over his efforts to keep Trump in office and has, as of April 2024, had his license to practice law in California state courts transferred to “involuntary inactive” status. His role in the efforts to keep Trimp in office includes attempts to pressure Mike Pence to reject the votes of electors from crucial swing states that Trump lost, and Eastman is accordingly believed to be among the alleged co-conspirators listed in the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump.

 

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.

#2797: Sheila Lewis Ealey

Sheila Ealey is – surprise, surprise – an antivaccine activist, speaker, self-declared “educator” and general critical thinking-challenged moron who appears to have absolutely no background in medicine but who has, over the last few years, become something of a de facto ambassador to the African American community on behalf of Andrew Wakefield and other antivaxxers. Ealey figured prominently in the antivaccine propaganda films Vaxxed and The Greater Good, and she is a board director for Robert F. Kennedy, jr.’s organization Children’s Health Defense. She is also a frequent speaker at anti-vaccine rallies, such as the 2017 “Revolution for Truth” march in D.C. and the 2019 Harlem Vaccine Forum (which we’ve written about before).

 

At least Ealey is honest that she is genuinely anti-vaccine and that, as she sees it, there is “no such thing as a save vaccine” – a refreshing departure from the “I’m not antivaccine but pro-safe vaccine” gambit most antivaxxers, including Kennedy, favor. Ealey’s reasoning, however, is arguably crazier than most – in addition to standard antivaccine talking points, Ealey has for instance argued against the need for vaccines by pointing out that in the Bible, before vaccines, “people were living, and they were living up to 200 years of age and beyond.”

 

For the most part, however, Ealey invokes racially charged gambits: She is on record likening the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 to Dredd Scott and claiming that the NCVIA made children “property, not people”, just as the Dredd Scott decision reinforced that slaves were property. She refrained from explaining the details of how that comparison is supposed to work, but at least it allowed her to conclude that antivaxxers are the “new abolitionists”. That strategy has won some popularity in the antivaccine movement, by the way; RFK jr. has himself produced another misinformation and propaganda movie called Medical Racism: The New Apartheid designed to scare people in Black communities with antivaccine misinformation (the movie isn’t about medical racism) – prominently featuring Ealey, of course.

 

Indeed, Ealey isn’t just opposed to vaccines; she also urges her listeners – in particular Black people – to avoid medicine altogether and instead take their children to chiropractors, often by citing historical atrocities like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which, ironically, didn’t concern victims being harmed by medicine but victims being harmed by being prevented from accessing medicine – such details don’t figure in Ealey’s narratives, of course. But since she isn’t too concerned with details or accuracy, she also links these medical atrocities to vaccines, blaming for instance the mythical “autism epidemic” on a vaccine “holocaust”. You should take your kid out of schools, too, by the way, presumably just in case schools risk making your kids more disposed to care about details than Ealey would like them to be.

 

Like so many other antivaxxers, Ealey is the mother of a son with autism, and like so many of them, she has deluded herself into believing that vaccines are responsible, which they demonstrably aren’t. Her story also has some gaps in it, with Ealey citing conspiracies orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies to claim that her son’s medical records were stolen from her evacuated apartment in New Orleans (so she can’t show them to you as part of antivaccine propaganda) and to explain why her lawsuit was thrown out.

 

Diagnosis: Batshit crazy conspiracy theorist who don’t even bother to appear semi-coherent or reasonable; but she has nonetheless managed to find targets for her conspiracy rantings and misinformation in underserved groups that are otherwise particularly likely to suffer devastating consequences if they trust her lies. This is bound to end badly.

#2796: Henele E'ale

Do you really need vaccines? According to a long list of naturopaths, the answer is ‘no’; a healthy immune system will protect you from infectious disease, the idea goes, so instead of vaccines, you should rather buy products from them that will help “boost your immune system”. In reality, of course, their products won’t do shit and the only way you can boost your immune system (in any manner that you would want to boost it!) is, ironically, through vaccines, which you need. But that’s facts and reason, and facts and reason are not in the repertoire of naturopathic dingbats like Henele E’ale.

 

E’ale is an ND affiliated with something called the Energetic Health Institute and with the BodyMind Institute, which, fittingly, makes him a colleague of David “Avocado” Wolfe. E’ale is also an anti-vaccine activist and a staple in videos from antivaccine websites like StopMandatoryVaccination. And a video on StopMandatoryVaccination, entitled “Go Vaccine Free Without Fear Of Death From Infectious Disease”, lays out his position: E’ale is, according to himself, “not afraid of my child dying from a infectious disease, because my child has that healthy immune system” and he credits his child’s (apparently – it is unclear how it has been determined; E’ale’s evidence is simply that his kid is allegedly “top of his class, he’s straight-A student”) healthy immune system to him (E’ale) deciding to forego vaccines after discovering that pharmaceutical companies make money.

 

And how do you achieve a good immune system? By living naturally, of course: people living ordinary stressful lives and who don’t buy E’ale’s supplements will “bio-accumulate” both “disease precursors”  and “Emotional Charge” through “Chronic Nutrient Deficiencies, GMOs, Pesticides, Mercury & Hundreds of Other Environmental Pollutants, Refined Sugar, Excessive Meat Consumption, Excessive Use of Pharmaceuticals (like Antibiotics, Proton Pump Inhibitors & Statins), Underlying Infections, and Embedded Emotional Charge can and will wreak havoc on the body’s ability to produce the energy essential for eliminating the disease precursors in the first place. Thus, the stresses of life help create a cycle of disease we will teach you how to break.” Oh, yes: a touch of germ theory denialism is only the icing on the iceberg here. And the solution? Detoxification, of course.

 

It’s staggering idiocy, but E’ale isn’t only promoting this kind of nonsense on the internet; he fancies himself a teacher. In particular, E’ale offers to train you as “a Vaccine Education Specialist”, thorugh a program in which he introduces you to most of the standard antivaccine misinformation tropes and errors, including toxins gambits, the claim that vaccines contain cells from aborted fetuses, mercury scares, mischaracterization of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and – completely predictably – a complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of of the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database, carefully neglecting to mention that reporting something to VAERS in no way means that a vaccine caused it.

 

Diagnosis: Henele E’ale is, in fact, a rather typical naturopath: he is an anti-vaccine activist who understands little of what’s actually going on, and who instead fills the gaps in his knowledge with conspiracy theories and magical thinking. Yes, it’s harmful, and yes, he is an insult to everyone who actually work hard to help prevent and manage people’s health problems with means that are actually effective. A true piece of shit.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2795: Jacob-Franz Dyck

The distinction between sovereign citizen activists and common crooks and frauds is a fuzzy one. Jacob-Franz Dyck – insofar as he is still around (we’re not sure) – is a case in point. Dyck, who (ostensibly) believes that U.S. laws don’t apply to him, is a serial harasser and felon who has been defrauding his way across Florida for a while with flamboyant and complicated schemes; in particular, Dyck has been filing sovereign deeds on houses he does not own and allegedly setting up trusts that would ostensibly protect other people’s property from foreclosure or seizure, as well as simulating legal processes by setting up various grand juries and sending lengthy pretend legal letters around – Dyck’s letters are template-constructed stuff that open with invoking the Messiah and a slew of Bible quotes before launching into an incoherent mess of arcane laws and imaginative nonsense, e.g. that banks cannot bring foreclosure actions in state courts that fly an American flag with yellow and gold fringes or that properties are protected from foreclosure by “pure trusts” and “land patents” that can never be broken: “With pure trusts you don’t have to pay taxes and the government can’t tell you what to do with your property”, Dyck tells his clients, who often go on to discover the hard way that such claims are based exclusively on Dyck’s imagination. Dyck is also a former dentist who was stripped of his dental license in 1988 and later spent some years as a self-professed “holistic healer” – as well as some years in prison around the turn of the century for grand theft.

 

Several of his accomplices, such as Gary Chenot and Khamma Inthavong (unlawful use of notary commission and a “simulated legal process” charge), have landed themselves in real and serious legal trouble as a result of buying into Dyck’s incoherent nonsense.

 

Diagnosis: Dingbat insanity, of course, but like those marketing alternative cancer cures, Dyck tends to target people who have landed themselves in real, difficult situations, and desperation is a powerful motivator. Dyck is ruining people’s lives, and insofar as he’s still around, he’s unlikely to have gotten any better. Take note of the name if you live in the relevant areas.

#2794: Claire Dwoskin

The Dwoskin Family Foundation has for a long time served as a generous source of a substantial part of the funding for various anti-vaccine organizations and anti-vaccine activist efforts. Indeed, the foundation has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations like the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) and Generation Rescue, provided substantial funding for Leslie Manookian, Kendall Nelson and Chris Pillard’s antivaccine propaganda movie The Greater Good, and generously supported antivaccine activist Chris Shaw’s group at the University of British Columbia – including 125 000 dollars to cover lab costs for the “Aluminum Toxicity Project” to enable it to reach the conclusions the Dwoskins wanted it to reach. There are more details about the foundation’s funding of anti-vaccine efforts here.

 

In 2013, the Dwoskins – Albert and Claire – also founded the organization Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI) to streamline their anti-vaccine efforts: the organization governed the Childrens’ Medical Safety Research Institute Endowment Fund, which was set up to provide “research grants” to groups and individuals willing to coordinate their results with what the Dwoskins thought the results should be, in particular research on what the Dwoskins determined, prior to research, to be “vaccine induced brain and immune dysfunction”; the CMSRI was founded because “[a]s a private foundation, the Dwoskin Family Foundation was limited to how it could raise and use donated funds. Laws governing tax-exempt organizations made it difficult to dedicate 100% of all donations to philanthropic [i.e. antivaccine] causes. In many situations, especially when dealing with international research organizations, donations were heavily taxed.” And the list of people who have received funding from the CMSRI is long, and includes most of the usual suspects involved in anti-vaccine junk research and misinformation, such as Yehuda Shoenfeld (Israel), who invented the made-up, allegedly vaccine-associated autoimmune disease ASIA, Christopher Shaw (Canada), Lucija Tomljenovic (Canada) (more on Dwoskin’s funding and Shaw & Tomljenovic’s research here), Christopher “no government funded this research [because the Dwoskins did]” Exley (UK), Anthony Mawson, Martha Herbert, glyphosate loon and conspiracy theorist Stephanie Seneff, David & Mark Geier (no less) and Brian Hooker, who have used to funds to produce a string of strikingly flawed and later retracted papers and articles in predatory journals, such as this one by Anthony Mawson (and funding from the CMSRI). There is more information on CMSRI and their efforts here, as well as here – that the Dwoskins have also been substantial contributors to political campaigns (e.g. Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid) at least ensured that their preferred semi-anonymity as antivaccine activsts became hard to maintain. The institute also ran its own blog, where people like conspiracy theorist Celeste McGovern could write about how there is a “conspiracy” to “suppress” anti-vaccine studies by retracting them due to obvious and demonstrable methodological flaws and dishonesty. Fortunately, the CMSRI closed down a couple of years ago after Claire and Albert got divorced.

 

Claire Dwoskin has herself served on the board of the NVIC. And according to her, she is, like most antivaxxers, officially “not antivaccine but pro-safe vaccines”, as illustrated e.g. by her comment to a segment John Stossel aired on his daughter’s struggle with pertussis: “What his daughter went through is NOTHING compared to what the families of autistic children go through every day of their lives. No disease can match this record of human devastation. Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems. Shame on you all” (our emphasis). Spoken like a true advocate for safe vaccines (and for the record: vaccines demonstrably do not cause autism) … heck, Claire Dwoskin’s email address is “novaccine4me@XXXXX.com”.

 

Notably, throughout its existence, the CMSRI and the Dwoskin Family Foundation provided substantial funding for efforts to paint vaccines as unsafe and no funding whatsoever for the development of safe vaccines. Rather, the CMSRI “firmly believes”, falsely, that vaccines are “significant causal factors in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, autism, autoimmune diseases and other serious chronic health conditions”. In 2011, the Dwoskins did arrange what they called a “Vaccine Safety Conference” at a luxury resort in Jamaica, where the talks included  “Rethinking the germ theory” and Andrew Wakefield himself speaking about “Autism & Vaccines: a Research Strategy Focused on Cause”; there was nothing about safe vaccines.

 

And CMSRI had a long history of promoting demonstrably false antivaccine misinformation. With regard to the largely mythical increase in the prevalence of ASD based on an increase in ASD diagnoses, the center – presumably Claire Dwoskin herself – falsely stated that “[t]he reason for this increase may be linked to certain ingredients found in vaccines, specifically aluminum formulated vaccines” (nope) and that “current research is suggesting that the use of vaccines are [sic] playing a role in its development.” “current research”, of course, means antivaxx rants; real research unambigously shows that vaccines play no such role. Then there are the toxins gambits, of course; according to CMSRI, but (predictably) not reality, “[c]ertain toxic ingredients in vaccines have not been individually tested for safety such as aluminum adjuvants, polysorbate 80 and Thimerosal”.

 

Now, the CMSRI fortunately closed down when the Albert and Claire started their divorce proceedings, and among the Dwoskins, we have focused on Claire insofar as Albert has apparently come to his senses: “After seeing a great deal of evidence, I have concluded that concerns about the safety of vaccination are unfounded. The best way to protect children is to make sure they have all their vaccinations as recommended by scientists, doctors and other healthcare professionals. […] I regret my participation in the CMSRI’s work and disagree with her [Claire’s] views on the dangers of vaccination.” Good for him. Claire Dwoskin, however, appears unrepentant and proud of her antivaccine efforts, while marketing herself as “a child health advocate, philanthropist and leader of an international effort to address the increasing incidence of chronic illness and disability, including autoimmune diseases, and age related neurological diseases”.

 

Diagnosis: Although she has hopefully lost access to nearly endless funding for her conspiracy theory-fuelled anti-wellbeing projects, Claire Dwoskin remains a deranged conspiracy theorist and a major danger to everything that is nice and good in the world.

#2793: Daniel DuSoleil

Daniel DuSoleil is pastor of the Christian Center of Elko and a creationist. DuSoleil is, however, particularly concerned with how teachers, as he sees it, uses science to bully Christians, and has plenty of hearsay and implausible anecdotes to make his case, such as the story of an anonymous student of his who said she had been called “stupid” in front of a class “because she would not accept the fraudulent evolutionary evidence of Haeckel’s embryos” (which, if at all based on reality, suggests a student trying to use Haeckel’s embryos to discredit evolution, with understandably dismal results): yes, it’s the familiar creationist argument by appeal to persecution. DuSoleil also points out how arrogant and bullyish atheists/proponents of science (DuSoleil doesn’t really distinguish them) are: Indeed some people, to DuSoleil’s consternation, actually openly endorse atheism and put up posters to that effect: “What an offensive way to denigrate Christian students”. Sheer persecution!

In favor of his position on scientific matters, DuSoleil has some well-mined quotes and PIDOOMAs. Did you know that “Einstein believed the universe demonstrated intelligent design”? Neither did we, (nor did Einstein, for that matter), though as a creationist talking point it’s admittedly not particularly original.

 

Diagnosis: Yet another local village fundie denialist. There are lots and lots of them, and many – like DuSoleil – have ready access to audiences that may be likely to consider him an authority. Which is depressing.

 

Hat-tip: The Sensuous Curmugeon

#2792: Kirk Durston

According to the Discovery Institute, who tends to publish his rants, Kirk Durston is a “scientist, philosopher, and clergyman”. Most importantly, Durston is a proponent of intelligent design creationism, and like most proponents of intelligent design, he focuses his efforts on criticizing the theory of evolution or theories of the origin of life or the universe that don’t invoke supernatural forces because he makes the fundamental mistake of confusing (hypothetical) evidence against the theory of evolution with evidence for intelligent design. Not that his criticisms have much merit either. A favorite trick is, predictably, to misleadingly portray real scientific claims and debates.

Much of his writing concerns the alleged “corruption of science”, for instance the fact that scientists sometimes entertain theories that are hard to test (like the multiverse): modern science is, according to Durston, plagued by “ ‘fantasy science,’ where science fiction is often confused with science”; instead, scientists should, as Durston sees it, accept the role of God. He does not try to apply the testability criterion to that one. On other occasions he does claim that intelligent design is “testable and verifiable” because it predicts “functional information” but is predictably stingy about details (like what the hypothesis actually is, what the predicted observation – “functional information” – actually is, and how and why the unspecified hypothesis predicts the particular and specific functional information it supposedly predicts).

 

Diagnosis: Yes, they are still chugging along, even though the intelligent design movement stopped having much impact on anything a while ago, with people like Durston appealing to the same PRATTs intelligent creationists were appealing to twenty years ago. Boring.