Whether and when John Eastman faces a jury of his peers in Georgia for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election remain to be seen, but his first trial is already underway in California, where the issue is whether he will be disbarred. Eastman is trying to persuade the judge that in promoting the plan for Vice President Pence to disqualify slates of Biden electors and give the election to Trump he was just engaging in mainstream constitutional lawyering. To make that point, Eastman has relied on testimony from Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo.
That might seem an odd choice, given that Professor Yoo isn't himself all that mainstream. If you had your choice of constitutional law professors to testify on your behalf that you're not an authoritarian kook, you probably would want to pick a constitutional law professor whose classes aren't picketed by people clad in orange jumpsuits decrying him as a war criminal.
But what Professor Yoo lacks in mainstreaminess, he makes up for in willingness to stake out highly unconventional positions. It would have been difficult for Eastman to find another well-known constitutional law professor to enthusiastically testify that the 12th Amendment is best read to give unilateral power to decide Presidential elections to the Vice President. Yet that's what Professor Yoo said. He will be cross-examined tomorrow.
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