Former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who’s facing possible dismissal from the California bar, says former Vice President Mike Pence is making a “potted plant pitch for the presidency” in which Pence claims to have been unable to stop Biden from becoming president when, in fact, according to Eastman, Pence was “in a position to try and do something about the illegality that even he acknowledged that occurred in the election.”
“It’s an interesting pitch that Mike Pence is making to become the leader of the free world, what I call Pence’s potted plant pitch for the presidency,” Eastman said during an interview on the right-wing Chuck and Julie podcast Wednesday. “You know, so, he was in a position to try and do something about the illegality that even he acknowledged that occurred in the election. And his answer was, ‘Oh, I’m just a potted plant. I have no authority whatsoever.’
“And now he wants us to put him in office to be the leader of the free world. That’s not the kind of leadership skill one anticipates as the foundation for a viable campaign for president.”
Pence has been widely praised for resisting pressure from Trump and Eastman to try to block the certification of ballots. Had Pence tried to stop certification, a constitutional crisis could have resulted, threatening American democracy, with unknown results.
“The entire effort since January 20th, the entire effort, has been to try and find something on which to get Trump, get him criminally indicted of a felony. Ideally, one that contains the word ‘insurrection’ in it so they can make the false claim that he’s ineligible for office altogether under the 14th Amendment,” Eastman also said on the podcast. “They forget the fact that Congress in 1872 eliminated that restriction on eligibility for office for all but the top civil war leaders.”
“They were bound and determined to, you know, scour the books to try and find something that they could use to pin on Trump to try and prevent him from running for office,” said Eastman. “Why? Because he’s a threat to the status quo, is a threat to the uniparty in D.C. And I’ll be very clear, I am as disgusted with the establishment Republicans as I am with the Democrats over this stuff.”
Eastman is a former visiting scholar at the University of Colorado’s Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization from 2020 to 2021. CU eventually canceled his classes due to a lack of enrollment.
He has close relationships with the right-wing of Colorado’s Republican Party, which is currently raising funds to pay Eastman to represent the party in its lawsuit to overturn the state’s law allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in primary elections.
Eastman’s trial in California will likely continue until mid-August.
