John Eastman Gets Paid: Trump Pardon for Advice on How to Seize the Presidency

President Donald Trump just issued preemptive pardons to dozens of allies who supported overturning the results of the 2020 election, including legal strategist John Eastman. In the process, he’s given Colorado a good reminder that it pays to study references before bringing in a conservative, any conservative.

The Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder was founded by Bruce Benson, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate who became president of CU from 2008 to 2019, to support “research that explores the ideas emerging from historically Western traditions and traces their continued influence. It focuses particularly on their role in establishing the foundational ideals and institutions of the United States.”

It is not supposed to encourage the demolition of those foundational ideals and institutions.

Enter Eastman, the conservative Chapman University law professor who was appointed the Benson Center’s Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the 2020-21 academic year, an appointment that came with a $186,000 stipend.

Midway through his CU tenure, Eastman went to Washington, D.C., where he advised Trump on how he could secure the presidency despite losing the election in November 2020. And Eastman was back on January 6, joining Rudy Giuliani — who also just received a preemptive pardon — to rally the troops on the Ellipse outside the White House.

Eastman’s strategy counted on the cooperation of Mike Pence, who simply needed to postpone the count of electoral votes — but the then-vice president refused to cooperate.

As Pence’s refusal showed, all conservatives are not created equal, and, like Chapman University, CU was quick to jettison Eastman following the Insurrection, after university officials “determined Eastman’s continued pursuit of these duties would likely be disruptive and damage the interests of the campus and the Benson Center.” (It helped that only a handful of students had signed up for his two CU classes that term.) At the time, Eastman threatened to sue, but no legal action was forthcoming.

From that direction, at least. In December 2022, the House January 6 Committee recommended that Eastman – who’d taken the Fifth over a hundred times during his testimony – be prosecuted on two counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an official proceeding. The committee called for Trump to be prosecuted on four counts.

How did Eastman first come to Trump’s attention? According to the New York Times, Jenna Ellis – a former Weld County assistant DA who became a legal advisor to Trump’s campaign (and just got a pardon, too) – shared an article that Eastman had written that questioned whether Kamala Harris could legally become president because her parents had not been born in the U.S. After that, the call to Colorado from Trump’s campaign came quickly.

CU was almost as quick to divest itself of its misguided appointee, posting this from Daniel Jacobson, the director of the Benson Center, in early 2021:

This year’s scholar, Professor John Eastman, has worked off-campus as a personal attorney for President Trump. In that capacity, he appeared at the rally in Washington D.C., where he made claims of unprecedented fraud during the recent presidential election and Georgia Senate runoff. The Center defends the right of its scholars to express unpopular opinions within the limits of the law. As a rule, the Center does not comment on the opinions of invited speakers and visitors. Nevertheless, the nature of these claims of fraud, and the subsequent violence at the Capitol, induce me to make a statement as the Director of the Center. 

I find these claims irresponsible for two reasons: the lack of evidence produced to support them and, especially, the context in which they were expressed. Claims of a stolen election are exceedingly serious and should only be made when they can be backed up with solid evidence. The evidence of material fraud Professor Eastman claims has only been asserted rather than produced. Few of these claims have stood up in court, and most of them have not been presented under oath. The serious procedural issues concerning changes made to state election laws are overshadowed by lurid allegations of rigged voting machines and irrefutable statistical evidence of fraud — none of which have been supported with tangible evidence. While these unsupported allegations are worrisome on their own, they become substantially worse when they are stated to a crowd gathered outside the Capitol in protest. I condemn the riot that followed these speeches unequivocally. 

The political use of violence is always beyond the pale. It is illegal and immoral, and it is the responsibility of public figures, including public intellectuals, to act responsibly in volatile circumstances. Professor Eastman did not call for the violence that occurred after the event, and his speech is protected by the First Amendment. Nevertheless, I am deeply disappointed by the radical claims Professor Eastman has made without producing adequate evidence and, even more, by the circumstances under which these assertions were made. 

The primary responsibility for the violence in our nation’s capital lies with those who committed it.  However, this year has illustrated the danger of public figures, including public intellectuals, who make excuses for political violence or make public statements that exacerbate dangerous situations. There has been too much playing with fire.  

And in Washington, that fire is still burning…

Although Trump’s move will protect Eastman, Giuliani and others from future federal charges, Eastman is still looking at potential legal action in some states, including Arizona. Where there’s smoke, there’s ire.