Eastman pushed top Wisconsin Republican Robin Vos to "nullify" the results and “reclaim" electors awarded to Biden.
Former Trump lawyer John Eastman is still trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election amid a legal battle with the House Jan. 6 committee over his role in the former president's failed effort to reverse his loss.
Eastman played a key role as a top adviser in Trump's scheme to block the certification of President Joe Biden's win and wrote a plan outlining how then-Vice President Mike Pence could supposedly reject legitimate electors from states won by Biden. Eastman's efforts have come under the scrutiny of the Jan. 6 committee, which subpoenaed his records related to the scheme. Eastman fought the subpoena before a judge last month ordered him to turn over documents after finding that he and Trump "more likely than not" committed federal crimes when they "corruptly attempted to obstruct" Congress.
But Eastman is not done trying to undo Trump's loss. He was one of several Trump allies who last month secured a two-hour private meeting with Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, to pressure him to "nullify" the 2020 election and "reclaim the electors awarded to Biden," which legal experts say is not possible, according to ABC News.
Eastman urged Vos to "decertify the election," according to the report. Jefferson Davis, a Wisconsin activist who also attended the meeting, told ABC that Eastman pushed Vos to start "reclaiming the electors" and move forward with "either a do over or having a new slate of electors seated that would declare someone else the winner."
Eastman did not comment on the meeting.
"By explicit request from Speaker Vos, that meeting was confidential, so I am not able to make any comment," he told ABC.
Eastman previously worked with other Trump allies to push Wisconsin officials to decertify the state's election, writing an eight-page analysis last December claiming that if there was "acknowledged illegality" in an election then the result of the election could be nullified and the legislature could then choose new electors "as it sees fit," according to Rolling Stone.
After the March meeting, Vos reiterated that the election could not be decertified. He has nonetheless has played a key role in ginning up election-related conspiracy theories in Wisconsin. He has pushed claims of widespread election fraud and hired election conspiracist Michael Gableman to lead a taxpayer-funded investigation into the 2020 race. Gableman, who spoke at a pro-Trump "Stop The Steal" rally before he was hired, last month presented a preliminary report echoing numerous debunked conspiracy theories and called on the legislature to decertify the results, even as Vos and legal experts explained there was no legal mechanism to do so. Gableman also called for the prosecution and possible imprisonment of election officials who refused to cooperate with his probe. A judge last month found Vos in contempt of court for refusing to release records from Gableman's investigation. Vos last week released 20,000 pages of previously-deleted emails showing extensive contact with election conspiracy theorists who were seeking ways to undo Trump's loss.
Eastman has also been active in other states. He joined a group of Colorado election deniers in February for an "emergency town hall meeting" at which participants baselessly accused Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, of "participating in an election fraud conspiracy," according to ABC News. Eastman bragged at the meeting about his role in election lawsuits in Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, accusing those who oppose the effort of "pure evil."
Eastman has previously said he met with Trump allies at the Willard Hotel one day before the Capitol riot, where the Republican's supporters convened a "war room." He was among the speakers at Trump's "Save America" rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, shortly before the Capitol assault began.
Trump has also pushed Wisconsin to decertify the 2020 election.
"Speaker Vos should do the right thing and correct the Crime of the Century — immediately!" the ex-president said in a statement last month. "It is my opinion that other states will be doing this, Wisconsin should lead the way!"
Trump has been in contact with "multiple" people working on the effort, according to ABC, and receives "regular updates" from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has sunk millions of his own money into pushing widely-debunked election claims.
"The coup attempt is ongoing," tweeted journalist Christopher Ingraham. "I hope I'm wrong, but all signs point to 2024 being a massively destabilizing event that nobody is preparing for, aside from the coup plotters."
Radio host and Salon contributor Dean Obeidallah called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to act to prevent the hijacking of democracy, echoing the growing frustrations of Biden and members of the Jan. 6 committee over the Justice Department's reluctance to pursue charges against Trump and his inner circle.
"The COUP is not over," he wrote, "and it will NEVER be unless Trump and his co-conspirators are prosecuted."
The November 2018 election means there will be a partisan changing of the guard in the Wisconsin governor’s office -- Republican Scott Walker out, Democrat Tony Evers in. The election results led to a changing of the minds among GOP leaders in the Legislature, where Republicans will continue to hold power in the new term. Republican leaders are moving quickly to undo some of the powers they granted the governor after the 2010 election, when Walker won and the GOP gained full control of the Legislature.
In November of 2010, Wisconsin elected Republican Scott Walker as Governor. (Walker’s predecessor, a Democrat, did not run for reelection.) In the same election, Republicans won control of both houses of the Wisconsin legislature. After taking office in 2011, the Republican-controlled legislature passed laws substantially increasing the Republican governor’s power.
In November of 2018, Walker lost his bid for reelection to the Democratic challenger, Tony Evers, and Democrat Josh Kaul also defeated Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel. Republicans, however, retained control over both houses of the state legislature. Following in North Carolina’s footsteps, the “lame duck” Republican legislature immediately (as in “Less than 24 hours after Tony Evers was elected governor,” and weeks before Evers was to take office) met in special session to pass a package of laws severely restricting the power of the incoming governor and attorney general--including reversing the very same laws it had passed eight years earlier.
Some of the changes affecting the Governor:
Taking away the governor’s new power to approve or prevent the adoption of administrative rules
Providing more legislative authority over state agencies
Restricting the governor’s power over rules used to implement state laws
Limiting the governor’s flexibility in how he runs many public benefits programs, such as his power over state work requirements for benefits like Medicaid and food stamps
Allowing Republican lawmakers to prevent Wisconsin from withdrawing from a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act
Requiring the governor to get permission from lawmakers to make changes to security provisions in the state Capitol, including banning guns or increasing the number of patrol officers
Requiring the administration to track and report if the governor pardons anyone or his aides release anyone from prison early
Some changes for the Attorney General:
Allowing lawmakers to replace the attorney general with private attorneys of their choosing for key cases
Requiring lawmakers to sign off on court settlements
Giving lawmakers instead of the attorney general control of how to spend court settlements
Eliminating the solicitor general’s office that oversees high-profile litigation
And as long as Republican legislators were pushing through laws while they still had a Republican governor to sign them, they also took the opportunity to make it even harder to vote, including:
Limiting early voting to roughly two weeks before an election
Requiring a two-year expiration date on student IDs used for identification at the polls
Limiting the use of receipts as valid voter identification for individuals trying to get a valid ID without a birth certificate
Moving the 2020 presidential primary election to March in order to benefit a conservative Supreme Court justice’s election bid
PolitiFact’s Flip-O-Meter rated the GOP’s maneuverings a Full Flop, representing “A complete change in position”:
“In 2011, the Legislature moved to give the governor more authority. In 2018, they are doing the reverse. That’s a Full Flop.”
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos tried to excuse the GOP flip thus:
“If there are areas where we could look and say, ‘Geez — have we made mistakes where we granted too much power to the executive,’ I’d be open to taking a look to say what can we do to change that to try to re-balance it. Maybe we made some mistakes giving too much power to Gov. [Scott] Walker and I’d be open to looking at that to see if there are areas we should change that.”
Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald made his party’s hyperpartisanship far clearer:
“The manufactured outrage by the Democrats right now is hilarious. I mean, most of these items are things [that] we never really had to kind of address because guess what — we trusted Scott Walker and the administration to be able to manage the back and forth with the Legislature. We don’t trust Tony Evers right now in a lot of these areas.”
Walker, of course, cheerfully signed everything to hamstring his Democratic successors, and to restrict the voting rights of the Wisconsin citizens who refused to reelect him.
The Speaker believed responsible conservatism wins elections.
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