- A Trump White House lawyer sharply rebuked John Eastman a day after the Capitol attack.
- Eric Herschmann told Eastman he would "need" a great criminal defense lawyer.
- A federal judge said in March that Trump and Eastman likely engaged in a criminal conspiracy.
A day after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the conservative lawyer John Eastman went looking for someone in then-President Donald Trump's orbit to discuss an issue involving his effort to overturn the election.
Eastman finally reached a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann. But Herschmann was not interested in entertaining Eastman's machinations.
As he later told the House select committee investigating January 6, Herschmann immediately shut Eastman down and advised him to go looking for a different kind of lawyer.
"I'm going to give you the best free legal advice you're ever getting in your life: Get a great f-ing criminal defense lawyer. You're going to need it," he told Eastman, according to a portion of Herschmann's recorded deposition that the House January 6 committee released Tuesday.
"Then I hung up on him," Herschmann added.
—January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 14, 2022
Herschmann's testimony offered new insight into how, even within the Trump White House and broader administration, Eastman was viewed as facing potential legal jeopardy in connection with his role in developing a last-ditch strategy to overturn the election. The House January 6 committee included the footage from Herschmann's closed-door interview in a video featuring Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel's Republican vice chair, as it previewed a Thursday hearing that will highlight Trump's effort to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify now-President Joe Biden's electoral victory.
The hearing will unfold just days after members of the House January 6 committee publicly split over whether the panel would consider referring Trump or anyone else to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee's Democratic chairman, told reporters late Monday that a criminal referral is "not our job." But Cheney tweeted that the committee "has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals," and other members made similar statements.
The House committee had been set to hold a hearing Wednesday on Trump's effort to pressure the Justice Department to help overturn the election, but the panel postponed that proceeding.
In the aftermath of that election, Eastman advanced an approach that called for Pence to refuse to count dozens of Biden's electors and either recess the joint session of Congress gathered to certify the 2020 results or send the election to the House.
As part of that strategy, Eastman pushed state legislatures Biden won to certify alternate slates of electors who would support Trump. None of the state legislatures followed through on Eastman's call, and Pence — acting on the advice of legal advisors and the retired Judge Michael Luttig — refused to take part in the plan.
On January 6, 2021, Eastman joined Rudy Giuliani in delivering remarks ahead of Trump's speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally where the then-president told supporters that "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Within weeks of that public appearance, Eastman agreed to resign from his position as a law professor at Chapman University in California.
Eastman sued the House committee in January to prevent the panel from obtaining his Chapman University records.
In the course of that litigation, a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn over records to the House January 6 committee and found that it was likely that the conservative lawyer and Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. Judge David Carter described Eastman's efforts as a "coup in search of a legal theory."
Testifying before the House January 6 committee, Herschmann said he had similarly harsh words for Eastman when he called the day after the Capitol attack. Herschmann recalled Eastman bringing up an issue related to Georgia.
In response, Herschmann said he asked Eastman, "Are you out of your f-ing mind?"
"I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: 'Orderly transition,'" Herschmann told Eastman, according to the former White House lawyer's recollection of the conversation.
"I don't want to hear any other f-ing words coming out of your mouth no matter what, other than 'Orderly transition.' Repeat those words to me."
Herschmann said that, eventually, Eastman repeated those two words back to him.