The eighth week of the impeachment trial of former Donald Trump lawyer and constitutional scholar John Eastman concluded Friday, with more testimony from Eastman and three of his witnesses. Eastman discussed the evidence he relied on when advising Trump on what to do about the possibility of cheating in the 2020 election, including official reports from the Georgia General Assembly, the Board of Elections State of Georgia and the Office of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
Eastman’s attorney, Randy Miller, asked him about a Nov. 13, 2020, report that the Georgia State Board of Elections had Seven Hills Strategies prepare on the 2020 election issues, which Eastman said he had trusted. He discussed chain of custody issues surrounding ballots and the integrity of their transportation, lack of transparency, access by Republican Party monitors and incompetence of election officials. California Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while serving on the bench, refused to let him speak.
He also refused to let him talk about a report de Kemp on electoral issues, which he also trusted. He examined the images of the ballots and found that many had been added incorrectly, including votes for Trump over other candidates and duplicate votes.
Eastman was allowed to discuss a report from an expert who investigated voting machines and software in Michigan’s Antrim County and found that votes cast for Trump were switched to Joe Biden, but the records were deleted so it didn’t go be able to investigate This report was filed in litigation.
Eastman then discussed a report prepared by members of the Georgia General Assembly on election issues, which included a portion of their testimony. It began: “The general election on 3 November 2020 was chaotic and any reported results should be considered unreliable.” The report listed nine broad findings, including violations of the law, lack of chain of custody and security for ballots, and “coordinated illegal activities by poll workers themselves who intentionally placed fraudulent ballots in the totals final elections”. He concluded that the election “was so compromised by systemic irregularities and electoral fraud that it should not be certified.”
Eastman spoke about the various laws broken by Georgia election officials, stating that breaking the law resulted in the voting of felons, minors and people without verifiable addresses. He said Georgia lawmakers asked Gov. Brian Kemp to call the General Assembly into session so they could fix the issues before certification on Jan. 6, 2021, but he refused.
The report contained testimony from Russell J. Ramsland, Jr., a Texas cybersecurity expert, who said Biden picked up “78 percent of the Dominion counties, but only 46 percent of the counties that used other manufacturers”.
Ramsland said there were “more than 96,000 ghost ballots, meaning they had been counted, but there were no county records recording those ballots as ‘received.'” Roland cut Eastman off from discussing Ramsland’s part in the report.
When Miller tried to ask Eastman about the book Denied? of auditor Joseph Fried who investigated voter fraud in the 2020 election, Roland refused to let it continue, as Eastman said he hadn’t read the book until last January.
Miller asked Eastman what other sources he relied on to determine there were electoral problems. Ramsland’s said expert report in King v. Whitmer, which examined vulnerabilities with voting machines in County Antrim, the documentary Kill Chain: Cyber ​​​​War on Electionsand one article called “Cracking Dominion’s Source Code – A National Security Threat Since 2003” by investigative journalist George Eliason.
Miller also tried to argue a statement on Georgia’s 2020 election issues by voting system cybersecurity expert Harri Hursti, presented at Curling against Raffensperger litigation, but Roland cut him off before he got very far. It stated that “scanner and tabulation software settings used to determine which votes to count on hand-marked paper ballots likely cause votes not to be counted with clear intent.”
Eastman said he reviewed the court’s 147 pages opinion in that case, which was issued on October 11, 2020, and acknowledged problems with the polling equipment, but did not order any significant changes before the election.
Miller spent a great deal of time asking Eastman about a mistake that was made in one of the 2020 election lawsuits that was largely covered up by California Bar attorney Duncan Carling. In the Trump vs. Raffensperger election lawsuit in Georgia, pundit Bryan Geels mistakenly wrote in his report — which was later corrected — that 66,247 voters registered to vote in Georgia before they were old enough when he wanted to cast about 2,000 voters. Eastman explained that it was an Excel spreadsheet error. However, many other alleged voting problems in Georgia affected tens of thousands of votes.
After Miller felt he had restored Geels’ credibility, he reviewed his other findings with Eastman. Geels found that the rejection rate for mail-in ballots in Georgia dropped significantly in 2020 because Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reached a deal with Democrats that relaxed the requirements signature verification. Previously, in the 2016 general election, 6,059 signatures were rejected and 202,492 were accepted. In the 2018 general election, 7,889 were rejected and 219,731 accepted. In the 2020 primary election, 11,772 were rejected and 1,150,478 accepted. In the 2020 general election, 4,471 were rejected and 1,308,407 accepted.
Eastman also spoke on video from Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on the night of the 2020 election, after election officials announced they were closing for the night, telling poll watchers and the media that they leave The count continued after they left. When it was discovered that they were counting, the people returned and the extra count was stopped. Eastman said this happened between 10pm and 1am. Carling objected to the testimony, since Eastman was not there, but he was testifying about seeing the video, and Roland sustained it.
The first character witness to testify was Professor William B. Allen, who supervised John Eastman while he was getting his doctorate and hired him to work as a special assistant to the US Civil Rights Commission. He said the charges against Eastman were “baseless.” Roland answered and told him that he was not allowed to talk about it. Allen said Eastman once convinced him to change his mind about birthright citizenship. She also said that if Eastman is incompatible, she would be “surprised” and “wouldn’t change” her opinion of him.
Character witness Wendy Long, who knew Eastman because she was a colleague of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, relayed that the “Thomas clerk family,” which is all the lawyers who have worked for Thomas, they keep in regular contact. He said it’s probably the strongest network of former SCOTUS staffers in existence, about 130 in all, who support each other through personal situations, hold meetings and gather for annual Christmas get-togethers. Roland cut her off and said it wasn’t relevant.
Asked by Miller if Eastman would have engaged in dishonesty or moral turpitude, the charges brought against him, she replied, “It goes against everything I know about this person.”
Former Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Janice Rogers Brown, who currently teaches at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, said Eastman has a “phenomenal work ethic; I consider myself a workaholic, but I’m embarrassed.” He said the breadth of his knowledge was “amazing; very, very well-versed … his knowledge is wide and deep, he just does so many different things.” He cited the many shows and podcasts he does in addition to teaching, representing clients and writing, along with “an incredible amount of published work,” referring to his 113-page resume.
The trial resumes on Monday at 9am PST, although Roland consistently starts about 20 minutes late. It continues sporadically until likely November 3 due to party scheduling conflicts. It is broadcast live here.
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Rachel Alexander is a journalist at The Arizona Sun Times i Star News Network. Follow Rachel Twitter / X. Tips by email a [email protected].
Photo “Brian Kemp” by Brian Kemp. “Voting Booths” background photo by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.