Government

Coups 4 Dummies Lawyer John Eastman Can't Stop Won't Stop Writing Wacko Election Memos

Don't hide your light under a bushel, professor!

By  
on

Ballot Box with Beer Election day drinkingJohn Eastman lost his job, is facing multiple bar complaints, and is embroiled in two federal lawsuits with the January 6 Select Committee. But he’s still talking, and not just to tell the National Review that he’s the white knight savior of January 6.

Rolling Stone’s DC bureau chief Andy Kroll has an article out now detailing efforts by Republicans in Wisconsin to overturn the results of the 2020 election, or at the very least to make sure that the Republican nominee takes the state’s ten electoral votes in 2024 no matter what happens at the ballot box. And where you find legislators trying to overrule the will of the voters, you’ll find John Eastman.

In a December 30, 2021 memo (yes, another one!) on letterhead from his Constitutional Counsel Group, Eastman explains to Wisconsin state Representative Timothy Ramthun the ins and outs of “recasting” electoral votes if the legislature doesn’t like the way the voters cast their ballots.

“You have asked me to provide an opinion letter addressing whether a state legislature has the constitutional authority to decertify previously certified electoral votes for a candidate for the office of President of the United States upon a definitive showing of illegality and/or fraud sufficient to have altered the results of the election,” he begins, before going on to insist that legislators don’t have to show fraud as a matter of law, but only as a matter of political necessity or “prudent statesmanship.” Just in case there was any doubt that he’s giving political cover to a legislative coup.

He insists that the state legislatures have plenary authority to appoint electors under the Constitution and they retain the authority to recast electoral college votes “at any time,” even after a new president is inaugurated on January 20, although he acknowledges that “the counter arguments increase in strength” as time goes by.

In fact, Eastman insists, the legislators must arrogate to themselves the power to determine the election if they think there is fraud, simply as a matter of “prudent statesmanship.”

Luckily, in this instance, Eastman says they have just that. According to the former dean of Chapman Law School, changes to Wisconsin electoral procedure which made it easier to cast a ballot during the pandemic render the vote sufficiently suspect that the legislature can simply call it a tie and cast itself as the dealbreaker. If county registrars allow for “absentee ballots to be returned to so called ‘human drop boxes’ rather than mailed or delivered in person to the clerk in an illegal ballot harvesting scheme,” then the legislature has the right to presume that all of those votes are fraudulent and thus the election doesn’t count, he argues.

Sponsored

Eastman has a whole host of other nifty tricks to get around the patently undemocratic nature of his proposal. He begins with the Supreme Court’s holding in Bush v. Gore that”the state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself.”  If the vote itself is illegitimate, Eastman reasons, then so is the certification by the secretary of state or the governor, and the legislature may simply disregard it. And if the certification is a nullity, then the electoral college slate submitted to congress is also null and void, providing ample justification for both the vice president and congress itself to simply disregard electoral slates at will.

Even the inauguration of the new president is no barrier, because “one significant common law principle is that actions taken as the result of fraud or illegality are void ab initio, and can be rescinded.”

By this logic, the legislature retains “plenary” jurisdiction over the electoral college votes in perpetuity, thereby enabling it to claw back not only the 2020 electors, but also the ones from 2012. So there’s hope yet for Senator Romney’s presidential aspirations. Finally some Mittmentum!

Or this is some crazy lipstick getting smeared all over a giant squealer of an electoral coup. OINK OINK.

Eastman Memo [Rolling Stone]

Sponsored

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

, ,