Arizona Sun Times lead journalist Rachel Alexander appeared on WarRoom Friday to detail the unprecedented prosecution of Constitutional scholar and attorney John Eastman by the California State Bar over his involvement with former President Donald J. Trump’s contest of the 2020 elections in several states. Should he be found guilty, Eastman will be stripped of his license in the state to practice law.
Watch this first of two segments:
TRANSCRIPT
Steve Bannon: Rachel Alexander. Rachel, thank you for joining us. Walk us through, first off, just for audience.
I know most people know – but who John Eastman is, what’s his importance in this? Why is he named in every other every other case central case to the Trump ‘Stop the Steal’ movement and why are they trying to disbar him?
Rachel Alexander: John Eastman is arguably the foremost constitutional legal scholar in the country. That is why this is significant. They’re not going after some person they can label as fringe. They are going after somebody who knows the law and the Constitution better than anybody. And basically what’s going on is they, the Left – are going after him because they want to use this as a precedent to scare other conservative attorneys from ever challenging elections where they believe there was fraud.
And it doesn’t even matter if it’s not technically fraud. Illegal wrongdoing, where in the past, if it wasn’t involving Republicans losing, judges would frequently order that the trials that that elections would be overturned and redone. So, this is an absolute travesty of justice. I’m, I’m now in the, what, fourth week of covering this, and it’s just a kangaroo court.
Everybody can tell from the very beginning, the judge who was donated to Democrats while sitting on the bench. It’s a given, all of our calls are pretty much extremely biased against. It’s Eastman and pro the state bar allowing in all this evidence that’s absolutely irrelevant to him and the way she doesn’t even understand that the electoral count act was amended in 2022 to state that the vice president cannot decide disputed slates of electors.
The woman is just way out of her league and Eastman is essentially just nonstop schooling her and the state bar attorney. It’s kind of a show.
Steve Bannon: This is one of the ones I love about your coverage. I want to get back and get some basics. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not a lawyer. The vast majority of our audience are not lawyers.
In this disbarment, is this like Rudy and other guys are going after? Is this to take his law license away to practice in the state of California so he then wouldn’t be able to teach or he then wouldn’t be able to actually practice? At the bar of California, he would not be able to basically make a living in California.
Is that what they’re trying to do in Orange County?
Rachel Alexander: Yes, and what a lot of non-lawyers don’t understand is, once you’re disbarred in one state, the other states reciprocate. They will not let you practice either. So once he’s barred in California, he won’t be able to practice anywhere else in the entire country.
Now, are there going to be a few brave universities like the Liberty University types that might hire him? Yes, I believe it might be the, I think the Kansas former attorney general [Phill Kline] might have been disbarred and I think he is now a professor at a university like that. But that’s pretty much the only exception, you know, or, you know, the bar destroyed my law license.
It’s been to me for six months, but they can’t stop me from opining. All I want now is to be a legal analyst-type.
Steve Bannon: Rachel, can you hang on for a second? You know, my good buddy Cernovich, who was with us in ’14, ’15 to ’16, really one of the key guys in the social media efforts. For the Trump movement and everybody knows, Mike has gone a little bit off the reservation over the last year or two – but hey, he’s still a comrade in arms.
I want to quote from Cernovich who just put this up and I quote, the John Eastman disbarment hearing has made me – that would be Cernovich – a full on 2020 is stolen person. If you’ve been following it, you realize what a travesty it was that John Eastman wasn’t point man on all the election issues.”
Rachel, I want to address this right now because Cernovich is a great guy, but he hasn’t been with us for a while. One of his big problems, I think, was these issues related to the 2020 steal. He says by watching it and then looking at your coverage that Cernovich is now full on 2020 stolen guy.
What’s your assessment of that? Of what’s just been put out, the content that you’ve seen put out in the disbarment
Do you think it also will drive even handed people that are looking this with an open mind to that conclusion?
Rachel Alexander: I do. I mean, if it influenced Cernovich, and he’s a very brilliant guy what I think’s going on there is the fact that Eastman is just the top intelligent person in the country, on the right, on this issue.
And he is so laser sharp, you cannot catch him. The whole trial has been an absolute travesty. Just watching, the judge tries slip him up, and she’s like tag-teaming with the bar council.
I mean, it’s not just a couple little incidents a day – it’s just nonstop. If you’re watching my coverage, it is like 20 outrageous, ridiculous things that would never happen in a regular court of law happening during the day.
I’ve never seen anything this bad. And, you know, I’m a longtime prosecutor in Maricopa County, elections attorney. I’ve seen it all. And this is just – we are in a different era. And I think the tide is starting to change. I just know we have to be very clever about it, you know, you can’t just sit there and throw out the words “election fraud” because the Left is so smart, they’ll trick us and they’ll say, ‘Well, you didn’t prove election fraud.’
Well, okay, it was breaking the law. You might have broken the law. It might not technically be called election fraud, but it is illegality. And then, so Eastman is really good at getting out all these nuances and getting ahead of their spin.
Steve Bannon: I want to go to this because lawfare is the thing – one of the things that’s coming after President Trump.
It’s a line of work that they hope to ensnare him. One, why is that dangerous for the country? And what is this trial showing specifically, that people should be concerned about or quite frankly afraid of the direction of the country from a breakdown of rule of law to now essentially the road to a totalitarian, authoritarian dictatorship?
Rachel Alexander: The frightening thing about lawfare is, this country has three branches that govern us and one is the judicial branch. If they take over this legal branch with their lawfare, that’s a huge segment that they’re going to control and legal stuff is involved in so many aspects of our lives now. They use the courts for everything.
You got a dispute over the election, you go to the courts.
So if they’re taking all this over, this is terrifying. And the part that scares me. As a recovering attorney, is they are pretty much scaring all of our attorneys out from ever representing us on all kinds of issues, not just election fraud, but COVID and anything that they don’t like. And you know, I used to think I was ‘poor me.’
I know they came after me 12 years ago; whatever.
No; it’s everybody now. Every conservative election attorney I know in Arizona has either had a bar complaint filed against them that they’re fighting or they’ve already been disciplined. They’re at risk of getting disbarred. We’re not going to have anybody left to represent us if this is allowed to keep going.
Steve Bannon: Now, I want to drill down a second because this is what they’re trying to do – and not just for their top attorneys. They’re also putting the law firms on notice. That they will get the clients to complain. I mean, it’s going to be almost impossible for you in a litigious environment. And it’s not just an election fraud, like you talk about, it’s across the board on so many different elements of what MAGA is fighting for.
Talk to me about the law firms because right now, unless you’re almost a sole practitioner. And they’re still coming after you. If you’re at a firm, they go after the firms and say, what, you can’t represent these people as clients, or we’re going to make a, a bar complaint and have a couple of your attorneys disbarred, which is a mark against the firm, give, give me your assessment of that.
Rachel Alexander: It’s even broader than that. It comes down to free speech as well, you know, the only reason I’m the only one, you know, in the country on the conservative side that’s closely covering this is because people with my background, right, are mostly still licensed attorneys and they can’t say a word. They have to be completely quiet.
And so people keep saying, ‘Well, you know, there’s no evidence of election fraud and there was nothing wrong done.’
Nobody can speak up and push back who actually understands these things and is seeing all these cases dismissed for technicalities and understands the doctrine of lashes and, and no jurisdiction and, you know, all those issues like that.
They’ve all been silenced. And so, to me, that’s the broader, key thing that’s happening here. We’re basically shutting down an entire segment of knowledgeable people – the attorneys.
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Image “Stephen K. Bannon’s WarRoom with Rachel Alexander” by Bannon’s WarRoom.
