Far-right attorney John Eastman, one of former President Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election racketeering case, told conservative publication The Federalist his legal expenses in the case have left him in a dire financial situation.
Eastman, founder of the right-wing Claremont Institute-affiliated Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and a former law professor at Chapman University, told Julie Kelly on her "Declassified" podcast that he is facing down $3 million to $3.5 million in legal fees to defend the case, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against the former president, Eastman, and over a dozen other accused co-conspirators.
According to Eastman, his legal defense fund has only raised about a sixth of what it needs. “I’m trying very hard not to completely deplete my wife’s retirement fund," he said.
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“When our founders pledged their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honors to create a government of a free people with free institutions, they put everything on the line,” he told Kelly.
“And we are at a crossroads in our country on whether we’re going to go back to a tyrannical form of government where we are subjects, not free citizens, or whether we are going to fight like our forefathers fought and our foremothers fought, for liberty.”
Eastman was the author of an infamous memo outlining how then-Vice President Mike Pence could use the declarations of fake electors in battleground states Trump lost as a pretext for discarding the real electors and initiating a process that would install Trump to a second term.
Eastman is not the only Trump adviser facing financial ruination over his efforts to overturn the election. Rudy Giuliani has also reportedly drained his bank accounts and faces an IRS lien on his home as the expenses of defending himself against civil and criminal suits, and maintaining his electronic records, piles up.
