Trump Attorney John Eastman Faces Grand Jury Over 2020 Claims

Former lawyer of former President Donald Trump, John Eastman, appears on screen during the fourth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, on June 21, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

John Eastman, a legal adviser for former President Donald Trump, appeared on Aug. 31 before a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury over his claims during the 2020 election, which Eastman’s lawyers called “unprecedented.”

During the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump was trying to determine how to move forward on his claims of widespread election fraud, Eastman was among the attorneys in Trump’s inner circle who supported an effort to refuse to certify electoral slates from states where concerns of election fraud were most prevalent.

Eastman’s position, which was that Vice President Mike Pence had the power under the 12th Amendment to reject some electoral slates, put Eastman in the sights of the Democrat-dominated House Jan. 6 committee, and more recently, in the sights of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Willis, a Democrat, has in the past demanded testimony from other Trump allies, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and ex-campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, as part of a probe into the 2020 election.

In a court filing at the time, Willis defended her probe by citing its relevance to Georgia (pdf). Specifically, she cited meetings between Meadows and other Trump allies touching on “allegations of voter fraud and the certification of the electoral college votes from Georgia and other states.”

Willis has been working with the grand jury to probe attempts by Trump and a number of his allies to convince officials in Georgia to investigate possible fraud following the 2020 election.

She asked the grand jury for help with the probe, which she says is based on information that indicates “a reasonable probability” that the election in Georgia was “subject to possible criminal disruptions.”

Willis says the investigation is based on a “multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere,” echoing similar statements made by the Jan. 6 panel in Congress.

Trump adviser John Eastman on Aug. 31 appeared before a special grand jury looking into Willis’s probes.

In a statement, Eastman’s lawyers, Charles Burnham and Harvey Silverglate, did not go into details about the contents of the Aug. 31 hearing, but said that they had advised Eastman to use his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent for much of the questioning.

Burnham and Silverglate then blasted Willis’s effort as “unprecedented,” and called on observers “of any political persuasion” to decry it.

“By all indications, the District Attorney’s Office has set itself on an unprecedented path of criminalizing controversial or disfavored legal theories, possibly in hopes that the federal government will follow its lead,” the attorneys wrote.

“Criminalization of unpopular legal theories is against every American tradition and would have ended the careers of John Adams, Ruth Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall and many other now-celebrated American lawyers,” they continued. “We ask all interested observers of any political persuasion to join us in decrying this troubling development.”

Eastman’s testimony comes after a Fulton County judge ruled that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp—who has himself squabbled with the former president from time to time—must also testify before Willis’s special grand jury following the Nov. 8 election, in which Kemp is running for a second term.