John Eastman, author of the infamous memo that purported to explain how then-Vice President Mike Pence could undermine the votes of millions of people in states around the country to install Donald Trump in a second term in the White House, now claims that the opinions written in that memo do not express his views, the National Review reports.
The only problem with his claim: he’s on video speaking at the January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally with Rudy Giuliani explaining the details of the memo and ginning up the crowd with conspiracy theories.
“They were internal discussion memos for the legal team. I had been asked to put together a memo of all the available scenarios that had been floated,” Eastman told the National Review. “I was asked to kind of outline how each of those scenarios would work and then orally present my views on whether I thought they were valid or not, so that’s what those memos did.”
Who asked him to do this? “It was somebody in the legal team. I just don’t recall,” Eastman says. “It was by a phone conversation, and I’ve gone back in my phone records, and I have so many calls, I can’t tell, you know, which call it was. I was asked, if this was the view of the law that were adopted by the court, how would it play out?”
During the January 6th rally, which preceded a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, Eastman had a very different opinion on the matter.
“We saw it happen in real time last night, and it happened on November 3rd as well. And all we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1:00 he let the legislators of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it, and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government, or not,” Eastman says, cajoling the crowd. “We no longer live in a self governing republic if we can’t get the answer to this question. This is bigger than President Trump. It is a very essence of our republican form of government, and it has to be done. And anybody that is not willing to stand up to do it, does not deserve to be in the office. It is that simple.”