Trump White House attorney gives up Trump’s personal attorney John Eastman to January 6th Committee
In an investigation like the January 6th Committee probe, it’s difficult to obtain the cooperation of those individuals who participated in the crimes that were taking place. For instance we’ve seen people like Mark Meadows unsure of what to do. They don’t want to testify at all, for fear of slipping up and incriminating themselves in the process.
The most useful witnesses generally end up being the people who were in the room and saw and heard everything that was going on, but refused to participate in the crimes. These people have no underlying criminal liability, meaning they can just honestly tell what happened and then go home.
For instance, most of you have never even heard of Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. But he’s a guy who refused to participate in any of Donald Trump’s election related crimes, and therefore has no criminal liability of his own. So it was an easy decision for him to go ahead and give cooperative testimony – and its sure turned out to be eye opening.
Per video released by the January 6th Committee, at one point Donald Trump’s personal lawyer John Eastman pitched his election overthrow scheme to Herschmann. In response, Herschmann told Eastman to knock it off, and advised him to “Get a good f’ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going need it.”
This is crucial, because it means that John Eastman had been advised by a White House lawyer that he was already in criminal territory with his election antics, and yet Eastman continued to escalate his antics. This demonstrates that Eastman knew he was committing crimes when he committed them. That goes a long way to proving his guilt.
John Eastman has already invoked the Fifth Amendment to the January 6th Committee. This suggests that he expects to be criminally charged by the DOJ, and that he’s afraid of further incriminating himself by testifying. In other words, Eastman knows he’s screwed.
Legal expert Laurence Tribe appeared on MSNBC late on Tuesday night and agreed with Herschmann’s assessment that John Eastman is going to need a very good criminal defense attorney. At this point the question may be when or whether Eastman will finally figure out that he’s going to prison for a long time unless he cuts a plea deal against Donald Trump.
