The eighth week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, wrapped up on Friday, featuring more testimony by Eastman and three of his character witnesses. Eastman discussed the evidence he relied upon when he gave Trump advice regarding what to do about the possibility there was cheating in the 2020 election, including official reports from the Georgia General Assembly, the Georgia State Election Board, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s Office.
Eastman’s attorney, Randy Miller, asked him about a November 13, 2020, report that the Georgia State Election Board had Seven Hills Strategies prepare about problems in the 2020 election, which Eastman said he’d relied on. It discussed the chain of custody issues surrounding ballots and the integrity of their transportation, lack of transparency, access for Republican Party monitors, and incompetency by election officials. California Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while serving on the bench, refused to let him discuss it.
She also refused to let him discuss a report from Kemp about election problems, which he also relied on. It examined ballot images and found that many were incorrectly added, such as votes for Trump going to other candidates and duplicate votes.
Eastman was permitted to discuss a report from an expert that investigated the voting machines and software in Michigan’s Antrim County and found that votes cast for Trump were switched to Joe Biden, but the logs were deleted, so it couldn’t be investigated. This report was submitted in litigation.
Next, Eastman discussed a report prepared by members of the Georgia General Assembly regarding the election problems, which included a portion of his testimony. It began, “The November 3, 2020 General Election was chaotic and any reported results must be viewed as untrustworthy.” The report listed nine overall findings, including lawbreaking, lack of chain of custody and security for ballots, and “coordinated illegal activities by election workers themselves who purposely placed fraudulent ballots into the final election totals.” It concluded that the election “was so compromised by systemic irregularities and voter fraud that it should not be certified.”
Eastman talked about the various laws broken by Georgia election officials, stating that the lawbreaking resulted in felons, minors, and those with no verifiable addresses voting. He said the Georgia legislators asked Governor Brian Kemp to call the General Assembly into the session so they could fix the issues before certification on January 6, 2021, but he refused.
The report contained testimony from Russell J. Ramsland, Jr., a cybersecurity expert from Texas, who said that Biden picked up “78% of Dominion counties but only 46% of counties using machines from other manufacturers.”
Ramsland said there were “over 96,000 phantom votes, meaning that they had been counted, but there was no record of the counties recording those ballots as ‘received.’” Roland cut Eastman off from discussing Ramsland’s part in the report.
When Miller attempted to ask Eastman about the book Debunked? by auditor Joseph Fried that investigated election fraud in the 2020 election, Roland refused to let him proceed, since Eastman said he had not read the book until last January.
Miller asked Eastman what other sources he relied upon to determine there were election problems. He said Ramsland’s expert report in King v. Whitmer, which went over vulnerabilities with the voting machines in Antrim County, the documentary Kill Chain: Cyber War on Elections, and an article called “Cracking Dominion’s Source Code — A National Security Threat Since 2003” by investigative journalist George Eliason.
Miller also attempted to discuss a declaration about the 2020 election problems in Georgia by voting system cybersecurity expert Harri Hursti which was submitted in the Curling v. Raffensperger litigation, but Roland cut him off before he got very far. It stated that “the scanner and tabulation software settings being employed to determine which votes to count on hand marked paper ballots are likely causing clearly intentioned votes not to be counted.”
Eastman said he reviewed the court’s 147-page opinion in that case, which was issued on October 11, 2020, and acknowledged problems with the voting equipment but didn’t order any significant changes before the election.
Miller spent a significant amount of time questioning Eastman about a mistake that was made in one of the 2020 election lawsuits that the California bar’s attorney, Duncan Carling, heavily covered. In the Trump v. Raffensperger election lawsuit in Georgia, expert Bryan Geels mistakenly wrote in his report — which was later corrected — that 66,247 voters registered to vote in Georgia before they were old enough when he meant to put around 2,000 voters. Eastman explained that it was an Excel spreadsheet error. However, many other problems alleged with votes in Georgia affected tens of thousands of votes.
After Miller felt he had restored credibility to Geels, he went over his other findings with Eastman. Geels found that the rejection rate of mail-in ballots in Georgia decreased significantly in 2020 due to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger entering into a settlement agreeing with Democratic Parties that relaxed signature verification requirements. Previously, in the 2016 general election, 6,059 signatures were rejected with 202,492 accepted. In the 2018 general election, 7,889 were rejected with 219,731 accepted. In the 2020 primary election, 11,772 were rejected with 1,150,478 accepted. In the 2020 general election, 4,471 were rejected with 1,308,407 accepted.
Also, Eastman discussed video from Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on the night of the 2020 election, after election officials announced they were shutting down for the evening, telling the poll watchers and media to leave. The counting continued to go on after they left. When it was discovered that they were counting, people returned in, and the additional counting stopped. Eastman said this occurred between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. Carling objected to the testimony since Eastman wasn’t there but was testifying about watching the video, and Roland sustained it.
The first character witness to testify was Professor William B. Allen, who supervised John Eastman while he was getting his PhD and hired him to work as a special assistant at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He said the charges against Eastman were “unsubstantiated.” Roland responded and told him he wasn’t allowed to discuss that. Allen said Eastman once convinced him to change his mind on birthright citizenship. He also said if Eastman is disbarred, he would be “stunned” and it “would not change” his opinion of him.
Character witness Wendy Long, who got to know Eastman due to being a fellow law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, relayed how the “Thomas clerk family,” which is all the lawyers who have clerked for Thomas, regularly keep in touch. She said it is probably the strongest network of former SCOTUS clerks that exists, about 130 total, who support each other through personal situations, hold reunions, and meet for annual Christmas gatherings. Roland cut her off and said it wasn’t relevant.
When Miller asked her if Eastman would have engaged in dishonesty or moral turpitude, the charges brought against him, she responded, “It goes against everything I know about this person.”
Former Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who currently teaches at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, said Eastman has a “phenomenal work ethic; I think of myself as a workaholic but he puts me to shame.” She said it was “incredible the breadth of his knowledge; very, very well-versed … his knowledge is broad as well as deep, he simply does so many different things.” She cited the many shows and podcasts he does in addition to teaching, representing clients, and writing, along with “an incredible amount of published work,” referencing his 113-page resume.
The trial resumes on Monday at 9 a.m. PST, although Roland is consistently about 20 minutes late starting. It continues sporadically through likely November 3 due to conflicts with the parties’ scheduling. It is live-streamed here.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Brian Kemp” by Brian Kemp. Background Photo “Voting Booths” by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.
