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Ray Haynes

In Defense of Dr. John Eastman

If I had any complaint about conservatives, it is their tendency to abandon fellow conservatives in the midst of a political fight. Democrats play politics for keeps, Republicans just play politics. Democrats seek to end the political careers of their political opponents, Conservatives oftentimes sit on the sidelines and let them do it. That is what is happening to Dr. John Eastman right now.

I first met Dr. Eastman when he was running for Congress in 1990. I was running for State Senate. We were both fighting powerful Democrats. We both lost. However, in the midst of the fight, I found Dr. Eastman to be a true, committed conservative, unafraid of the fight. A good man, whose commitment to conservative causes could not be questioned. Over the years, we did not always agree, but I know our disagreements were not based on a difference of values, but rather a difference in the application of those values. He is a conservative deserving of our support and loyalty.

To set up this discussion, Dr. Eastman came up with a legal theory to challenge the voter outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona based on the voter fraud committed in those states. For his effort, he is currently being villified by Democrats who see a chance to destroy a Trump loyalist, and he is being called crazy, seditious, evil, and a variety of other names by the leftist media throughout the country, while conservatives sit on the sidelines and watch.

Let me start by saying I did not agree with his interpretation of the ECA or his strategy for addressing the voter fraud issue in Congress. Voter fraud has been an issue in big city machines since the 1870s, yet there is no remedy for that fraud, because the big city machines control the vote counters and the prosecutors who would prosecute voting irregularities in those big cities. Tammany Hall in New York, the Daley machine in Chicago, similar machines in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis and other places have acted with impunity for over a hundred years. In Philadelphia, a former Democrat Congressman was recently convicted of committing voter fraud there for over a dozen years. The press would have us believe that fraud proven in this politician’s conviction, which has been committed by others in Philadelphia since 1870, magically ended in 2018, and Trump’s claims of such fraud in 2020 are “a lie.” That contention is patently absurd. I believe there has to be some kind of remedy for those actions. I think the action to counter the voter fraud needed to be taken pre-election, and the ECA has tools to do that. Post election remedies, in which the count is challenged after an election, have a public relations problem. Those actions look too much like sour grapes. Since the ECA has a pre-election method of dealing with voter fraud (which we all know will occur in the big cities), I believe that addressing the problem before the election should have been the Plan A of the Trump campaign. Eastman’s plan was a Plan B, which would have been set up by a good Plan A.

All that being said, Dr. Eastman’s plan was still a remedy to the voter fraud that occurred, and which we all know occurred. The media’s branding of the claims of voter fraud as “the big lie” is simply propaganda. That fraud occurred in every election in this century and the last, and has a well documented history. Dr. Eastman’s plan had historical precedent in 1876 (though that was pre-ECA, many of the same problems in 1876 occurred in 2020, fraud, vote suppression, and the like), where the controversy surrounding the election of the President led to direct Congressional intervention. That’s all Dr. Eastman’s plan called for, that is, direct Congressional intervention, and has an arguable legal basis in 3 USC Section 15. It was not crazy, unfounded, seditious, or any other of the adjectives used by the leftist media to attack him. Conservatives should stand with him to help him make his case.

That is what lawyers do. Attempt to construct a legal theory to address real problems. I may disagree with the strategy, but that fact that Dr. Eastman attempted to construct a legal basis for combating the very real voter fraud that has occurred in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Atlanta for the past 100 years does not justify the actions, which include threats of criminal prosecution and disbarment, being taken against him.

Dr. John Eastman deserves the active, vocal support of conservatives everywhere. I, for one, stand with him in his fight.