For those who are wondering, yes, John Eastman’s attorney knows it’s “risky” for his client to babble on TV about pending criminal cases against him. But he didn’t advise him against it.
Eastman, a former attorney for Donald Trump and a co-defendant in the Georgia election interference charge, spoke at length about the case in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham last week.
At one point, Eastman admitted he had asked Mike Pence to delay confirming voters’ votes on Jan. 6, 2021, but insisted he never told the then-vice president to turn them down.
Many legal experts and commentators took this as an admission that Eastman was trying to prevent certification, saying it was a bad decision to speak about the prosecution on national television and wondering why his legal team would allow him to do so.
On Wednesday, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Eastman’s attorney Charles Burnham if he was concerned Eastman’s comments could be used by prosecutors.
“Did you advise him not to speak in public?” she asked.
Burnham said they decided to ditch the “typical defense playbook of crouching” and instead opted to speak openly about the case
“In our opinion, Dr. Eastman innocent. He has nothing to hide. He is clearly innocent. He was acting in his capacity as attorney and law professor,” Burnham said.
“All the facts are more or less known. There’s not a lot of mystery here,” he added, noting that “we made the decision to be as risky as possible, to be as open as possible with journalists and other questions about the case.”
“So it’s potentially risky for him to speak publicly, you think?” asked Collins.
“Oh, sure,” Burnham replied. “I think hopefully that shows everyone how confident we are in our client’s case and how important we think it is, how important it is to John Eastman that these facts be presented to the public for analysis.”
Some of the “facts” presented by Eastman were demonstrably false.
In his interview with Ingraham, he repeatedly stressed that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, sparking opposition even from the Trump-allied Fox News anchor.
Eastman had also admitted an email exchange The House Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack was told it knew the delay in counting was unlawful.
burnham insisted on CNN Wednesday that Eastman didn’t want to impede or impede certification, just wanted to “impose a short delay,” which Collins noted is essentially the same thing.