John Eastman Speaking at the "Save America" Rally on the White House Ellipse, January 6, 2021
The populist demagogue must distract his audience from seeing the incoherence in all populist rhetoric. The fundamental claim of populist rhetoric is that a society is divided into two groups--the Elites and the People--and the populist demagogue speaks for the People against the Elites, who are the Enemy of the People. This is deceptive because in fact the populist demagogue speaks only for some faction of the People, and often it's a minority faction, although it can be a large minority.
That has always been Donald Trump's problem: he's an unpopular populist. He has been popular with a large number of American voters. And in some states and congressional districts, Trump and Trump-endorsed candidates can win the majority of votes. But Trump and Trump candidates can never win the popular vote in national elections. That has been true in the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020 and in the mid-term elections of 2018 and 2022. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by nearly three million votes. Joe Biden's popular vote in 2020 exceeded Trump's by over seven million. In the mid-term elections, the Trump-endorsed candidates either lost or they underperformed as compared with other Republican candidates.
The populist demagogue has two ways to evade this problem of unpopular populism. He can argue that those who oppose him do not belong to the body of the People, either because they belong to the Elites, or because they are aliens who do not belong to the community of the People. Or he can argue that whenever he loses a popular election, the election has been fraudulently stolen from him by the Elites. He can then use these arguments to justify a military coup to overturn an election and keep himself in power.
As I have indicated in some previous posts (here, here, and here), the people at the Claremont Institute who have been the leading academic intellectuals supporting Trump have employed both arguments. Amazingly, they acknowledge the problem of Trump's unpopular populism, as when Michael Anton admits: "a national popular vote guarantees a Democratic win in every presidential election." But then they try to say that those Americans voting against Trump are not real Americans, as when Glenn Ellmers said that the majority of American voters--those who voted for Joe Biden--are not "authentic Americans," because they are more like gerbils, zombies, or rodents. Also, many of those at the Claremont Institute have supported Trump's claim that the presidential election of 2020 was stolen, although some have admitted that this is a lie. And some of them (like Anton) have suggested agreement with alt-Right thinkers like Bronze Age Pervert and Curtis Yarvin who have said that what America needs is for someone like Trump to become a military dictator.
The one person at the Claremont Institute who was most influential in planning Trump's attempt to overturn the election of 2020 is John Eastman. And now that we have the final report of the Congressional Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, we can see that Eastman was the linchpin to Trump's plan for the insurrection and the attempted coup, a plan that failed only because Trump did not have the guts or the guns for becoming a military dictator.
FIVE BIG LIES
The Report of the Select Committee provides demonstrative evidence that Eastman promoted five lies that were crucial to Trump's plan for overturning the election of 2020. Moreover, the Report also shows that Eastman knew that these were lies. This evidence would justify convicting Eastman of federal crimes, such as obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, inciting or assisting an insurrection, and seditious conspiracy. In fact, one federal judge (Judge David Carter) has already ruled that "more likely than not" Eastman has violated federal criminal law.
Eastman's first lie was his claim that the presidential election of Joe Biden in 2020 was fraudulent. When Eastman was asked under oath by the Select Committee what evidence he had uncovered that the election was stolen, he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination! Eastman was part of the Trump legal team that brought over 60 lawsuits in state and federal courts claiming that the election was stolen. They lost all of those lawsuits. And in many of them, they admitted they had no proof of election fraud.
The Select Committee also provides massive evidence that many of Trump's closest advisers told him that there was no evidence for election fraud. This included Attorney General Bill Barr, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller, and many others. Eastman and Trump continued to repeat their charges of election fraud despite these many warnings from their own people that these charges were false.
Why did Eastman and Trump continue this lie even while knowing that it was a lie? Some people in the White House heard Trump explain: "I don't want people to know we lost."
Eastman's second lie was that Vice-President Pence had the constitutional power, as the presiding officer of the Senate, to declare at the January 6th joint session of Congress that some of the electoral votes for Joe Biden from some of the states would not be counted. Actually, when one of Eastman's colleagues proposed this theory to him before the election, Eastman rejected it:
"I don't agree with this. The 12th Amendment only says that the President of the Senate opens the ballots in the joint session then, in the passive voice, that the votes shall then be counted. 3 USC sec. 12 [of the Electoral Count Act] says merely that he is the presiding officer, and then it spells out specific procedures, presumptions, and default rules for which slates will be counted. Nowhere does it suggest that the president of the Senate gets to make the determination on his own. Sec. 15 [of the Electoral Count Act] doesn't either" (23).
But then, after Biden won the election, Eastman adopted this theory that Pence could refuse to count the Biden electors certified by the states. Pence and his legal counsel Greg Jacob denied that the Vice-President had this kind of power. When they argued about this, Eastman admitted that his theory would lose unanimously at the Supreme Court. Eastman also admitted that he did not think Vice President Al Gore had this power in 2001, nor would Vice President Kamala Harris have this power in 2025.
Oddly, when Jacob wrote to Eastman on January 6th to ask whether he had informed Trump that the Vice President did not have authority to decide the election unilaterally, Eastman responded: "He's been so advised, but you know him--once he gets something in his head, it is hard to get him to change course." So once again, we see the Eastman knew that his theory was a lie.
Eastman's third lie was a plan devised a few days before the meeting of the Electoral College on December 14th, when the Electors for the winning candidate meet in each state capitol to cast their electoral votes, to have some Trump voters meet and prepare a series of false Trump electoral slates for seven states where Biden had actually won. They were told to submit their fake electoral slates to Pence, so that Pence on January 6th could declare that he was counting the Trump slates rather than the Biden slates. Trump's lawyers in the White House testified to the Select Committee that they had told Trump and Eastman that that this was not legal, because the Biden slates of electors had been certified by the seven state governments.
Eastman's fourth lie was his plan to convince some Republican-controlled state legislatures to certify a Trump slate of electors, even though Biden had won the popular vote in their states, and even though the Biden slates had been certified in these states on December 14th. Not a single state legislature agreed to do this.
Amazingly, in a memo written before the election, Eastman had actually rejected this plan:
"Article II [of the Constitution] says the electors are appointed 'in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,' but I don't think that entitles the Legislature to change the rules after the election and appoint a different slate of electors in a manner different than what was in place on election day. And 3 U.S.C. sec. 15 [of the Electoral Count Act] gives dispositive weight to the slate of electors that was certified by the Governor in accord with 3 U.S.C. sec. 5" (23).
So, once again, Eastman admits that his theory that state legislatures had the constitutional power to overturn the results of a presidential election was a lie. It is especially shocking that writing in the pages of The Claremont Review of Books, Eastman repeated this lie that he knew to be a lie.
Eastman's fifth lie was his plan to persuade the Justice Department to draft letters to the state legislatures of Georgia and other states. This letter would say: "The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States," and "we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia." This was a lie, because under Attorney General Bill Barr, the Department had conducted many investigations of election fraud allegations that found that all of these allegations were unfounded; and therefore the Department of Justice did not have "significant concerns" that fraud "may have impacted the outcome of the election" in any State.
When the top leadership of the Department of Justice refused to send out this letter, Trump found someone in the Department--Jeffrey Clark--who would be willing to send out the letter if Trump appointed him Attorney General. When Trump suggested he might do this, all of the leaders of the Department of Justice, including all of the Assistant Attorneys General, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone all agreed that they would resign in masse if Trump did this. This forced Trump to back down.
Eastman's five lies motivated the insurrectionists of January 6th in their attempt to stop the Congress from certifying Biden's victory in the Electoral College.
THE INSURRECTION
In the early morning hours of December 19th, 2020, Donald Trump sent out this tweet: "Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud 'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
Most of us who saw this tweet at the time didn't think much about it. But the Select Committee's Report provides massive evidence that this tweet--and over a dozen other tweets urging his supporters to gather for the protest in Washington on January 6th--were interpreted by many far-right groups (such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and others) as a call for them to organize for a violent attack on Congress on that day. As of today, nearly 500 people have been convicted or pleaded guilty for their violence on January 6th; and most of them have testified that they did this because they thought they were following orders from Trump to use violence in stopping the Congress from certifying Biden's election and thus securing the continuance of Trump's power as president. After all, isn't this what Trump meant by "Be there, will be wild"?
And isn't this what Trump meant, at the protest rally on the Ellipse on January 6th, when he told his audience to march to the Capitol and "fight like hell" if Pence did not do his duty and overturn the election? Before this speech by Trump, Eastman made his own short speech at the Ellipse repeating his lies about fraudulent elections and Pence's duty to refuse to certify the election of Biden.
Jeremy Bertino is a Proud Boy who pled guilty to seditious conspiracy as one of the organizers of the January 6th insurrection. In his plea agreement, he explained that he "believed that storming the Capitol would achieve the group's goal of stopping Congress from certifying the Electoral College Vote," and that "storming the Capitol or its grounds would be illegal and would require using force against police or other government officials" (41). Many of the insurrectionists have said the same thing.
During the insurrection, at around 3:15 p.m., cameras captured Cale Clayton as he taunted police officers: "Your fucking president told us to be here. You should be on this side, right here, going with us. You are an American citizen. Your fucking President told you to do that. You too. You too. All of you guys. That Tweet was for you guys. For us. For you."
Some of the people at the Claremont Institute have argued that this is a misinterpretation of what Trump said in his tweets and in his speech on January 6th, because Trump surely did not intend to incite these people to violence. But this ignores the evidence of the context of the speech--both before and after the speech--that shows that this is exactly what Trump intended to do.
As the Select Committee's Report indicates, many of Trump's people inside and outside the White House were worried that the protest rally on January 6th would turn violent, and they begged Trump to issue a public statement warning people before January 6th that this rally must be peaceful. Trump refused to do this.
Moreover, after Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse, at 1:10 p.m., the violence at the Capitol raged for over three hours; and Trump sat watching TV coverage of the violence, without ever making a public statement to tell his supporters to stop the violence, leave the Capitol, and go home. He refused to do this although dozens of his political advisers and supporters were begging him to do this. When Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received many emails and phone calls asking him to persuade Trump to stop the insurrection, Meadows told people that Trump did not want to stop it.
And over the entire day, Trump was never in contact with Pence or others on Capitol Hill to see what he could do to help. Moreover, he never contacted anyone in the Department of Defense, the National Guard, or local police departments to see they could do to stop the rioters. Pence was forced to act on his own in calling for military and police reinforcements to stop the insurrection.
At 2:24 p.m., knowing that the riot was underway, Trump sent this tweet: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"
This tweet immediately provoked more intense violence at the Capitol, and many of the rioters started chanting "Hang Mike Pence."
Counselor to the President Hope Hicks texted a colleague that evening: "Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him?"
At 4:17 p.m., Trump finally broadcast a video message asking those attacking the Capitol to leave. He said: "I know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now. We have to have peace." As the words of this message spread through the rioters, they started to leave.
At 6:01 p.m., Trump sent his last tweet of the day, in which he tried to justify and even glorify the violence: "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred election landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever."
"Great patriots"? "Remember this day forever"?
The day after the attack on the Capitol, Eastman called Eric Herschmann (a senior adviser to Trump) to talk about litigation for the Trump campaign in Georgia. In response to questions from the Select Committee, Herschmann described his response to this: "And I said to him, are you out of your fucking mind? Right? I said, because I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: Orderly transition. I said, I don't want to hear any other fucking words coming out of your mouth, no matter what, other than orderly transition. Repeat those words to me."
Before hanging up the phone, Herschmann offered one last remark: "Now I'm going to give you the best free legal advice you're ever getting in your life. Get a great fucking criminal defense lawyer, you're going to need it."
Later, Eastman asked to be put on Trump's list of people to be pardoned. But Trump did not pardon him.
FOR THE LACK OF GUTS AND GUNS
Trump's attempt to overturn the election and keep himself in power failed. Why?
As I have argued previously, the answer is that Trump did not have the guts or the guns necessary for becoming a military dictator. He didn't have the guns because military leaders like General Mark Milley told him and stated publicly that the American military would not obey unlawful orders from the President demanding military intervention in domestic politics.
In response to this, Trump could have declared martial law and then try to force the military to obey him. But he didn't have the courage to do this. Commentators who have identified Trump as a "strongman" are wrong. He is a "weak man." He doesn't have the martial virtues of a Caesar.
And it's good for America that he lacks these Machiavellian virtues.
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