Eastman ‘confident’ all Georgia defendants will be ‘vindicated’ at trial

John Eastman, previous attorney to former President Trump, said he believes all of the Georgia racketeering case’s 19 co-defendants will be found not guilty at trial.

“I think if we get a fair trial in Fulton County, whether that’s in state court or federal court, I’m confident that we’ll be fully vindicated,” Eastman said in a Fox News interview Friday. “Not just me, but all the defendants.”

Prosecutors allege Eastman and the other defendants, including Trump, participated in a broad scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. They allege Eastman was a lead figure in setting up a fraudulent slate of electoral votes for Georgia.

The attorney said the charges against him and others are weak, and said their prosecutions are politically motivated. He called the precedent from such a broad racketeering case against a former president “very dangerous,” and compared his charges to those in Soviet Russia.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” he said.

“Our federal criminal code and our state criminal code have gotten so expansive and so vague that any one of us can be charged by a creative prosecutor with three felonies a day,” he continued, describing a book by one of his own attorneys.

He defended his actions, saying he had a right to contest the 2020 election legally and that he would do it again if given the opportunity.

“The stakes are very high. If we don’t have fair elections, if we don’t have a rule of law in how those elections are conducted, then one of the most basic premises, the foundation stones of our country, is gone,” he said.

Eastman has recently come under criticism for his extensive media interviews. He frequently speaks about the case online and in the media. That’s an intentional part of his strategy, he said.

“This fight is 95 percent political and 5 percent legal, and [I felt that] if I wasn’t talking in the press then I wasn’t entering the ring where the real battle was going on,” he said.

The trial for two defendants in the case is scheduled to begin Oct. 23, with the date for other defendants — including Eastman and Trump — not yet set, but anticipated for spring 2024. Prosecutors urged a judge to expedite all 19 defendants’ trial dates.