Attorney John Eastman, the architect of the legal strategy designed to keep former President Donald Trump in power, gets out of his car to speak with reporters after a hearing on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, in Los Angeles.
Jae C. Hong | Associated Press
Attorney John Eastman pleaded not guilty on Friday in an Arizona case in which he and other allies of former President Donald Trump were charged with crimes related to an attempt to undo his 2020 election. Crimes related to the state’s election loss to President Joe Biden.
Eastman is the first of 18 defendants to stand trial in state court in Phoenix.
Arraignments of other defendants, including former Trump House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, are scheduled in the coming weeks.
Eastman, Meadows, Giuliani and more than a dozen others, including Trump, have been separately charged in Georgia courts with crimes related to their attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat.
Photos of “fake electors” in Arizona taken by Donald Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman.
Courtesy of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office
“I just appeared in court and was arraigned on charges that I believe should never have been brought,” Eastman said outside court Friday.
“Of course, I plead not guilty. I had zero communication with Arizona voters and zero involvement in any election proceedings or legislative hearings in Arizona,” Eastman said. “I am confident that with the law faithfully enforced, I will be completely exonerated at the end of this process.”
Arizona Grand Jury was charged last month Eastman et al.
In December 2020, 11 Trump supporters claimed to be Arizona Electoral College electors and tried to cast their votes for Trump even though Biden won the state.
Trump himself was not charged in the indictment, but he was described in the indictment as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
In March of this year, a California judge recommended that Eastman be disbarred from the state’s bar because of Eastman’s behavior after the 2020 election, including plans to have then-Vice President Mike Trump lost when Mike Pence refused to certify electoral votes for Biden in several battleground states.
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