What is John Eastman really up to tonight?
Yesterday, the news broke that the DOJ had carried out a warrant and seized John Eastman’s cellphone from him, even as Eastman filed suit against the DOJ to try to get his phone back. Now, late tonight, Politico is reporting that Eastman has dropped his longtime suit trying to block the January 6th Committee from obtaining his phone records from his carrier. So what’s he really up to?
There are at least a couple different plausible explanations here. Some observers on social media are wondering aloud if this means that Eastman has flipped. That’s possible. But given that Eastman just filed a new suit against the DOJ yesterday, it would mean that today’s bombshell hearing prompted him to conclude that he needed to hurry up and cut a deal. Given that he wasn’t a topic of today’s hearing, it’s difficult to figure out how this would have been the case – unless something about today’s testimony made him realize that more about him is about to come out.
It’s also possible that Eastman is simply pulling the plug on his suit over his phone records, because he figures there’s no point now that investigators have his actual phone. He’s surely racking up legal fees by carrying on with these frivolous suits, so perhaps he’s merely trying to save up for what will surely end up being a very expensive criminal defense if he tries to fight the charges that he’s inevitably going to get hit with.
That said, when defiant co-conspirators finally decide to flip, it’s not always a decision based on logic. Sometimes they just get worn down by the totality of what they see coming. So it’s theoretically possible that Eastman is suddenly negotiating a deal with the DOJ. But in such case, don’t expect the DOJ to announce as much any time soon. Any such deal would be kept secret for as long as possible, while the DOJ pursues the people that have been flipped on.
