John Eastman ties to Clarence Thomas scrutinized after Ginni Thomas election text revelations: report

According to a report from Politico, attorney John Eastman -- who was leading the charge to overturn 2020 presidential election results that ousted Donald Trump from the White House -- is receiving new scrutiny over his relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas.

In light of revelations about texts being exchanged between Ginni Thomas and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, where the wife of the Supreme Court justice was passing on conspiracy theories and urging the Trump's inner circle to do what they could to remain in power, one member of the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection said he has some questions for Eastman.

As Kyle Cheney reports, "Eastman spent the final weeks of Trump’s presidency driving a strategy to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, a plan that relied on legal theories so extreme the Jan. 6 select committee says they could amount to criminal conspiracy and fraud," before adding, "The select committee has evidence that when a top Pence aide challenged Eastman’s plan on Jan. 4, 2021, Eastman initially told him he believed two Supreme Court justices would back him up. One of them was Ginni Thomas’ husband, Justice Clarence Thomas."

Politico is reporting that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is raising concerns about Eastman and Justice Thomas.

"Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told POLITICO that the new details raise important questions about whether Eastman had a specific reason to believe Justice Thomas would support his radical gambit, or if he was simply voicing a hunch," Cheney wrote before noting, "Eastman’s attorney Charles Burnham did not respond to questions about whether Eastman maintained ties to the Thomases or communicated with either of them in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 defeat. There’s no known evidence that Eastman was directly in touch with either of the Thomases during his campaign to pressure Pence to subvert the results."

According to Politico, "Eastman had reason to know Thomas’ views well: He clerked for the George H.W. Bush appointee in the 1990s before becoming a mainstay in deeply conservative legal circles."

The report goes to note that when investigators asked Eastman if he had any reason to believe that the Supreme Court would support his plan to have former vice president Mike Pence refuse to certify the election and throw it back to the states, his response was to plead the 5th Amendment.

What has raised red flags was testimony from Pence lawyer Greg Jacob who told the committee that Eastman had told him that at least two Supreme Court justices might support his plan, with Jacob saying he couldn't recall if Eastman named the other justice.

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