Co-conspirator in Trump's indictment formerly led once prominent anti-LGBTQ group

 

John Eastman

Just in case you've recently been in a cave with your fingers in your ears, former president Donald Trump was just indicted again, this time for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

This makes the third group of criminal charges for Trump.

From Raw Story:

Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in connection to special counsel Jack Smith's investigation of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and plots to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. CNN was first to report the indictment and said a source confirmed Trump had been told. 

 The former president has been charged with four offenses: conspiracy to defraud the United States, two counts of witness tampering, and conspiracy against rights. The indictment also specifies six unnamed co-conspirators whom, according to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, include four attorneys, a DOJ official, and a political consultant. 

 The probe looked at a broad array of alleged schemes by the former president and his allies, including efforts to seat fake electors in a number of closely-divided battleground states that were carried by President Joe Biden, and a pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence to declare electors from those states invalid. 

 As of now, the unindicted co-conspirators have been named and includes one who should be of interest to the LGBTQ community - John Eastman.

According to The Washington Post:

“Co-conspirator 2” was an attorney “who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election," according to the indictment. Eastman, a conservative attorney who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, crafted a legal strategy that involved creating slates of pro-Trump electors in states that Joe Biden won. He falsely asserted, without evidence, that Trump lost Georgia in part because 66,000 underage people and 2,500 convicted felons had voted in the state that year.

Eastman has remained defiant, even as he faces potential disbarment for his role in aiding Trump. In June, Eastman defended himself before the State Bar of California on 11 charges stemming from allegations that he was the architect of the legal road map Trump followed to try to obstruct the electoral vote count in certain states. The State Bar also accused Eastman of making false and misleading statements regarding alleged election fraud, referencing claims he made at a rally at the Ellipse outside the White House that preceded the deadly riot. If Eastman is found culpable for the allegations, he could lose his license to practice law in California. 

 Before his involvement in the attempt to illegally overturn the 2020 election, Eastman played a prominent role in anti-LGBTQ activism. In fact he was president of the infamous group the National Organization for Marriage or NOM.

According to The Advocate:

Before Eastman, a former law professor, tried to throw the 2020 presidential election to Donald Trump, he was a major activist against LGBTQ+ rights. In 2011, he became chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, a group with the primary mission of opposing marriage equality, although it has taken up some other conservative causes too. NOM's website still lists him as chairman and the well-known anti-LGBTQ+ activist Brian Brown as president.

 

. . . Among Eastman's other greatest hits, compiled by GLAAD and others, he has said marriage should be limited to male-female couples because it's for procreation; voiced support for Uganda's efforts to criminalize homosexuality, potentially imposing the death penalty; questioned Kamala Harris's eligibility to be vice president, even though she was born in the U.S., because her parents were not citizens at the time of her birth; said homosexuality is barbaric and will undermine marriage and all of civil society; and opposed gay-straight alliances and LGBTQ-inclusive lessons in schools.

Who knows what will happen to Eastman. Maybe he can claim that Jesus told him to help Trump cheat.