We already told you about Steve Bannon’s response to the Democrats’ January 6 committee subpoena: “Not just Trump people and not just conservatives – every progressive, every
liberal in this country that likes freedom of speech and liberty should be fighting for this case. That’s why I’m here today: for everybody. I’m never going to back down.”
Now constitutional law professor John Eastman is the latest Trump ally to resist the Committee’s political witch hunt and his lawyer’s response to this illegitimate political persecution is something every conservative should read, post to all their social media accounts and send to all their family, friends and contacts because it puts legal meat on Mr. Bannon’s defiant resistance.
“Dr. Eastman hereby asserts his Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself in response to your subpoena,” Dr. Eastman’s attorney, Charles Burnham, wrote in a letter to the J6 Committee’s Chairman, Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
“Members of this very Committee have openly spoken of making criminal referrals to the Department of Justice and described the Committee’s work in terms of determining “guilt or innocence,” Burnham continues. “Dr. Eastman has a more than reasonable fear that any statements he makes pursuant to this subpoena will be used in an attempt to mount a criminal investigation against him.”
One of the crucial elements of the letter are procedural objections to the structure of the Jan. 6 committee, focused on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to reject Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s appointees to the panel.
“The lack of a ranking minority member makes it impossible for this Committee to comply with clearly applicable House rules on subpoenas and depositions,” Mr. Burnham wrote.
“While Dr. Eastman emphatically denies committing any illegal acts, he nonetheless has a reasonable fear that the requested information could be used against him in court,” Burnham wrote.
And Dr. Eastman’s fears are well founded.
Even setting aside the objection that the Democrat-controlled House violated its own rules in setting up the J6 committee, all one need do is look at the precedent of the Trump impeachment proceedings run by the same players running the J6 committee to recognize a perjury trap being set up.
“The Fifth Amendment is there to protect the innocent as well as guilty. You look at the subpoena,” Dr. Eastman said on Mark Levin’s podcast, adding that the panel’s subpoena included “29 categories of documents and communications spanning a period of 19 months,” as well as contacts in his contact list.
POLITICO reported Dr. Eastman also discussed the letter on “War Room,” the podcast run by Steve Bannon, who has been indicted for refusing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee. Eastman confirmed on Bannon’s show that the letter was delivered on Dec. 1 to Thompson, as well as to McCarthy. He called the Jan. 6 committee a “farce” and urged listeners to donate to his legal defense fund, which has collected more than $50,000 as of Dec. 3.
You can read a transcript of that segment of the “War Room” podcast courtesy of our friends at The Tennessee Star through this link.
Reading the entire transcript is definitely worth your time, but here’s the crucial part:
But we also did a deep dive into the legality of this committee. And Nancy Pelosi acknowledged at one point that when she refused to put on the republicans that had been recommended by the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that that was an unprecedented step.
And indeed it was. Throughout our history, our committees in congress have been bi-partisan. Each party has roughly a proportional share of committee members that reflect its proportional share of the overall body.
And when Pelosi refused to accept any of McCarthy’s picks, that meant there were no Republicans appointed to that committee by the process that has normally been employed. And that had very significant consequences.
One, the authorizing resolution for the committee says five out of the 13 shall be appointed after consultation with the minority leader. Well, she didn’t take any of them. So that’s zero out of 13. She did appoint two nominal Republicans. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who are virally anti-Trump.
But they weren’t appointed by the Republican caucus and therefore they are not reflective of the Republican party. The reason this is significant is the way the committee does its business, it has to have a consultation with the ranking minority member.
And there isn’t one! It has to give the ranking minority member the ability to hire counsel to be a counterpoint in the questioning of witnesses. There isn’t one. That counsel is supposed to be given equal time according to the House rules and long-standing precedent.
But there isn’t one! And the notion that counsel hired by Liz Cheney who was appointed by Pelosi can serve that adversarial role is laughable. And so this whole thing is just a farce. And more importantly, you end up with people kind of having to be deposed behind closed doors.
And as we saw Adam Schiff do in the Ukraine impeachment, he would selectively leak distorted versions of what was said behind closed doors in order to try and build a narrative that wasn’t true.
And back then, you had other people like Jim Jordan who could go out and publicly correct the record because they are protected by the constitution speech and debate clause from being held to account for anything they say. But if a witness goes out and corrects the record, now that’s a contempt of Congress. This is a star chamber and it’s rather extraordinary.
Bannon: Can I ask you, Raheem wrote this article. This is a letter that your lawyer sent to Benny Thompson the chairman of the committee. He wrote a detailed letter about these issues?
Eastman: Yes. My legal team put together a legal letter responding to the subpoena request explaining all of the reasons why I was going to assert my priveledges under the fifth amendment not to come to testify and not to produce all of these documents.
The first half of the letter is all these procedural flaws in the whole process. These aren’t technicalities. There is a good reason for 230 years that we’ve had bi-partisanship on committees. That’s how we protect against hyper-partisan witchhunts.
There is a good reason why Congress doesn’t have law enforcement capability. Because it’s politicized by definition. And yet they are operating as if they are prosecutor, judge, and jury.
Here’s the bottom line: Steve Bannon, Dr. John Eastman, attorney Jeffrey Clark and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are all fighting the same battle, and it is, as Steve Bannon said, “for everybody.” To support Dr. John Eastman’s legal defense fund go to https://givesendgo.com/eastman I’m already in for $100 and I hope you will join too, even it is only a buck to show your support.
Liz Cheney
Adam Kinzinger
January 6 Commission
Donald Trump
Kevin McCarthy
Democrats
Nancy Pelosi
Steve Bannon
John Eastman