When Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, right-wing attorney John Eastman came up with a legal coping strategy: What if, he proposed, we just pretend that Trump won? That strategy hit a wall when former Vice President Mike Pence refused to play along, with Trump declaring him a coward and traitor while hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempted coup d’etat.
Hundreds of January 6 insurrectionists are now behind bars. Eastman, a fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute, can no longer practice law in his home state of California, and was recently indicted for his role in trying to overturn voters’ will in the state of Arizona, but he nonetheless remains a free man. And he’s back, offering the MAGA faithful another glimmer of hope that their 77-year-old leader will be able to avoid any and all consequences.
