John Eastman Hasn't Sued CU (Yet), but He Faces Plenty of Court Dates

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 John 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, in late 2020, Eastman went to Washington, D.C., where he advised former President Donald Trump on how he could secure the presidency despite losing the election in November. After a bout of COVID, Eastman was back on January 6, joining Rudy Giuliani to rally the troops on the Ellipse outside the White House.

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 has been forthcoming.

From that direction, at least. In December, 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.

And last last week, the State Bar of California announced that it intended to seek Eastman's disbarment after an investigation that lasted almost a year; he faces eleven disciplinary charges in that state. Eastman “contributed to provoking a crowd to assault and breach the Capitol to intimidate then-Vice President [Mike] Pence and prevent the electoral count from proceeding," the bar said, "in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy — for which he must be held accountable.”

Georgia, too, has looked into Eastman's role in election interference (that state's probe resulted in Eastman's phone being seized); a decision on indictments is due soon.

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 — 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 United States. After that, the call to Colorado from Trump's campaign came quickly.

Although the Benson Center still acknowledges Eastman's appointment on its website, the link to his bio is broken, and a campaign continues to have the Benson Center disbanded.

Fortunately, Eastman was never admitted to the bar in Colorado, a state that is considered to be the "gold standard" for election integrity.