ATLANTA — A lawyer who helped mastermind the plan to appoint a slate of “alternate” Republican presidential electors in Georgia and other swing states won by Joe Biden in 2020 cited attorney-client privilege and pleaded the Fifth Amendment during his testimony Wednesday before a Fulton County special grand jury.
Attorneys for John Eastman said they advised their client to cite those protections “where appropriate” as he answered questions from Fulton prosecutors and the 23-person grand jury Wednesday morning.
“Out of respect for grand jury secrecy we will not disclose the substance of the questions or testimony,” attorneys Charles Burnham and Harvey Silverglate wrote in a joint statement.
Burnham and Silverglate warned that the district attorney’s office “has set itself on an unprecedented path of criminalizing controversial or disfavored legal theories, possibly in hopes that the federal government will follow its lead.”
“Criminalization of unpopular legal theories is against every American tradition and would have ended the careers of John Adams, Ruth Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall and many other now-celebrated American lawyers,” they wrote. “We ask all interested observers of any political persuasion to join us in decrying this troubling development.”
Eastman is one of several lawyers for the Trump campaign, including Rudy Giuliani, who have been compelled to testify before the grand jury, which is probing whether former President Donald Trump or his allies broke any state laws as they sought to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia.
Eastman was involved in at least two matters that are of interest to the grand jury.
He was reportedly a key architect of the plan to press Vice President Mike Pence to reject the official Democratic electors in Georgia and a half-dozen other contested swing states on Jan. 6, 2021, in favor of a set of Trump electors.
To that end, 16 Georgia Republicans signed paperwork in the state Capitol in December 2020 claiming to be the state’s duly elected presidential electors.
A federal judge in March argued that “it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
Eastman also testified at a December 2020 statehouse hearing of interest to the grand jury. During his remarks, Eastman argued that there was “more than enough” evidence of fraud and improper conduct to warrant Georgia lawmakers picking an alternative slate of presidential electors.
“I don’t think it’s just your authority to do that,” Eastman said, “but, quite frankly, I think you have a duty to do that to protect the integrity of the election here in Georgia.”
All 16 of Georgia’s fake electors were sent “target” letters earlier this summer alerting them they could be indicted, along with Giuliani. (The Fulton DA’s office was later barred from investigating one of those electors, state Sen. Burt Jones, due to a conflict of interest.)
On Tuesday, Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump campaign attorney from New York, appeared before the special purpose grand jury, according to court filings.
Fulton prosecutors say Chesebro worked with the leadership of the Georgia Republican Party to coordinate the slate of alternate electors. Prosecutors also say Chesebro worked directly with Giuliani to carry out the plan.
Chesebro’s attorney, prominent white-collar defense lawyer Scott Grubman, declined to discuss his client’s testimony. But he was critical of the ongoing probe involving Trump’s legal team.
“Lawyers who take on unpopular clients and provide legal counsel should not find themselves under investigation,” Grubman said. “It’s a slippery and exceedingly dangerous slope.”
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(Staff writer Bill Rankin contributed to this article.)
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