Electors in New Mexico, Santa Fe resident John Eastman play role in Trump charges

Aug. 2—SANTA FE — New Mexico and one of its residents — attorney John Eastman of Santa Fe — surface repeatedly in the indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of illegally scheming to stay in office and overturn his 2020 election loss.

Eastman is one of six co-conspirators — not identified by name — accused by federal prosecutors of helping Trump as he engaged in criminal efforts to retain power.

The indictment accuses Eastman of circulating a memo that outlined an unlawful plan for Vice President Mike Pence to declare Trump the certified winner of the election. The document also says Eastman acknowledged no court would support his plan and that, in one conversation, he remarked that sometimes in the nation's history, violence had been necessary to protect the republic.

In an interview Wednesday, Eastman attorney Harvey Silverglate said his client didn't violate the law and was simply doing his job as a lawyer. He developed "cutting edge" legal theories, Silverglate said.

"Unequivocally, John Eastman committed no crimes — none," the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Silverglate said in an interview. "And if indicted, he is going to trial. If convicted, he will appeal."

The indictment also identifies New Mexico as one of seven states central to Trump's plan to thwart the will of voters by calling on Republicans to submit fraudulent electors in sham ceremonies.

The Trump campaign sent fraudulent elector certificates to New Mexico, according to the indictment, even without litigation pending on Trump's behalf in the state.

A subsequent legal challenge to New Mexico's election results, in fact, was filed just six minutes before a deadline for the false electors to cast their votes — a pretext, the indictment says, to ensure litigation was pending when the GOP electoral votes were cast.

Eastman a co-conspirator

Eastman, whose Santa Fe home has attracted protesters for months, has made New Mexico his primary residence since 2018. He and his wife have owned a home in the deep-blue city for about 20 years.

Eastman isn't identified by name in the indictment. But he matches the description of "co-conspirator 2" — an attorney who devised and tried to carry out a strategy to leverage Pence's ceremonial role in the certification of the election to obstruct the proceeding, according to the indictment.

Silverglate, Eastman's attorney, told the Journal he can say with "99% certainty" that his client is the person the indictment calls co-conspirator No. 2. He can't be 100% sure, he said, because the prosecutors didn't have the courtesy to notify Eastman's legal team.

Silverglate said he and Eastman's other attorneys are preparing a memo they will send to the Department of Justice demonstrating that Eastman's conduct was entirely lawful.

"John Eastman acted as a lawyer," Silverglate said. "He came up with some theories that are cutting edge."

The indictment, nevertheless, casts Eastman as one of six people enlisted by Trump as co-conspirators "to assist him in his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power."

Eastman isn't charged in the indictment. Trump faces four counts handed up by a grand jury this week.

Trump has characterized the charges as a politically motivated prosecution.

Eastman surfaces throughout the document. The indictment says Eastman:

Encouraged legislators in some states to decertify legitimate electoral votes as part of the plan to keep Trump in power. Two days before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, for example, Eastman is accused of calling the Arizona House speaker and, even after being told there was no evidence of substantial fraud, urging the speaker to decertify the electoral votes anyway and let the courts sort it out.Was made aware that some of the allegations in a Trump lawsuit challenging election results in Georgia were false. But Trump and Eastman allowed a Trump-signed verification connected to the suit to be filed anyway."Falsely represented" to the Republican National Committee chairwoman that the GOP electors in contested states would be used only if litigation succeeded in changing a state's election results.Circulated a two-page memo outlining a plan for Pence to unlawfully declare Trump the winner.Privately acknowledged to the vice president's lawyer that the Pence plan wouldn't survive judicial scrutiny. Eastman said he "hoped to prevent judicial review of his proposal because he understood that it would be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court," the indictment said.After being told his plan might cause street riots, he responded that "there had previously been points in the nation's history where violence was necessary to protect the republic."

New Mexico's role in the scheme, the indictment said, was at odds with Joe Biden's overwhelming victory in the state. Biden won New Mexico, a reliably Democratic state, by more than 10 percentage points, or 99,720 votes.

The court filing says Trump and the co-conspirators targeted fraudulent electors in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. New Mexico and Pennsylvania Republicans added a caveat saying they cast their votes in case they were later recognized as duly elected, qualified electors.

The New Mexico Attorney General's Office has previously announced that it was referring allegations against the state's fake electors to federal authorities.

Those certificates were filed by Jewll Powdrell, a member of the executive committee of the Republican Party of New Mexico; Deborah Maestas, a former chair of the state Republican Party; Lupe Garcia, an Albuquerque business owner; Rosie Tripp, a former Socorro County commissioner; and Anissa Ford-Tinnin, a former executive director of the state Republican Party.

New Mexico AG to reach out to DOJ

Attorney General Raúl Torrez said Wednesday he has been in communication with the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico about the case, and Torrez was aware that the New Mexico matters were being reviewed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose office spent months investigating Trump before filing charges against the former president on Tuesday.

"What we'll be doing is reaching out to the Department of Justice and the special counsel to cooperate with our investigators," Torrez said. "And hopefully, once we get more clarity on who was involved, what was said, and what was done, then we'll be in a position to evaluate whether or not there are applicable criminal charges."

Torrez did say that the caveat added to the fake certificates from New Mexico could play a role in determining if a crime had occurred. In Michigan, where the fraudulent electors didn't include such a hedge, Attorney General Dana Nessel has filed charges against the false electors. Torrez said that Michigan has different election laws than New Mexico does.

New Mexico law makes it a fourth-degree felony for designated electors to cast ballots for anyone other than the presidential candidate who won the state's popular vote.

"It looks like an attorney was engaged to sort of hedge what the declaration was going to be," Torrez said. "That complicates things from a criminal perspective."

New Mexico Republicans still defend their electors.

"The Republican electors cast their vote in the event that legal challenges concerning election fraud at the time prevailed and, in turn, affected the election results," said Steve Pearce the chairman of the state's Republican Party.

He said the tactic had been used previously in 1960 by Democrats in Hawaii.

"This resurgence into this matter is just a continuation of the witch hunt against former President Trump and the sensationalization of reality to score cheap political blows," he said.

In prior statements, the party said the Republicans signed and submitted the certificate just in case "it might later be determined" they were the rightful electors. They also said the plan was being "hyped up" by the media.

In an interview on Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said the indictment makes it clear that the fake electors were part of an effort to commit fraud.

And she said New Mexico's false electors, many of whom hold high-ranking positions within the Republican party, show how much influence Trump still has over the Republican party.

"I think it really spotlights the depth of how the GOP has really given into Trump's dismantling of our institutions," she said.