John Eastman Shoots Himself in the Foot on Fox News

Former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman has been accused of admitting to an allegation of trying to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results during a Fox News appearance in which he discussed the events leading up to the January 6 attack.

Eastman is among 19 defendants, including Trump, who have been charged under the Fulton County district attorney's sprawling 2020 election interference case. He defended his and the former president's actions while speaking to Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night.

During the interview, Eastman was met with pushback from Ingraham about false claims of widespread election fraud at the 2020 election.

As well as being indicted in the Georgia case, Eastman was listed as one of Trump's six alleged co-conspirators in Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal indictment against the former president as part of the investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump has pleaded not guilty to four charges under Smith's probe, with Eastman not being charged.

Eastman is alleged to have been a key part of the fake elector plot to falsely declare that Trump had beaten Joe Biden in several key states, and to have been involved in attempts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the election results despite knowing such a move may be illegal.

When asked by Ingraham what his "constitutional" plan was on January 6, 2021, Eastman replied: "Some people had urged that Vice President Pence simply had power to reject electors whose certification was still pending.

"I explicitly told Vice President Pence in the Oval Office on January 4, that even though it was an open issue, under the circumstances we had I thought it was the weaker argument, and it would be foolish to exercise such power.

"What I recommended, and I've said this repeatedly, is that he accede to requests from more than 100 state legislators in the swing states, to give them a week to try and sort out the impact of what everybody acknowledged was illegality in the conduct of the election," Eastman added.

While sharing a clip of the interview on X, formerly Twitter, Bradley P. Moss, a lawyer who specializes in national security, wrote: "He literally just confessed to the crime."

Democratic strategist Max Burns wrote: "John Eastman, on trial for trying to impede the certification of presidential electors, admits on Fox that he explicitly wanted to impede the certification of presidential electors."

Hugo Lowell, a politics reporter for The Guardian, said: "Fmr Trump lawyer John Eastman says on Fox News that what he wanted on Jan. 6 was for VP Pence to delay certification from happening for a week. Not news but in his own words it sounds like he wanted to impede the certification."

George Conway, a lawyer and frequent critic of Trump, added on X, while sharing the clip: "Pro legal tip: If you've been indicted for doing something, don't talk about that something on TV."

Eastman's legal team has been contacted for comment via email.

While Eastman hasn't been charged in Smith's federal January 6 probe, page 34 of the indictment details how Trump and Eastman met with Pence on January 4, 2021, to try to convince Pence that the vice president should "reject or send to the states Biden's legitimate electoral votes, rather than count them."

Page 42 also includes a section that states that hours after the January 6 attack took place, Eastman wrote to Pence to "implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation" of the Electoral Count Act and "adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here."

Also during the Fox News interview, Ingraham told Eastman that she hadn't seen evidence to suggest that widespread voter fraud cost Trump the last election and that the suggestion that election irregularities "rose to the level of changing the outcome of the election" is unproven.

Ingraham's pushback on the false election fraud claims arrives after Fox News settled with Dominion for $787.5 million in April. The company was suing Fox for $1.6 billion after the network repeated conspiracy theories that Dominion Voting Systems were used to rig ballots in favor of Biden over Trump in the 2020 election.

While sharing a clip of the Eastman interview, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes wrote on X: "Lol. You can almost see the $800 million Dominion settlement sitting on screen in great big sacks looming over her as she tries to avoid another one."