From the order list:
22-1138 EASTMAN, JOHN C. V. THOMPSON, BENNIE G., ET AL.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. Justice Thomas took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.
I was glad to see, as I had suggested, that Justice Thomas recuse given the involvement of his wife in events with Eastman connected to Trump’s attempted subversion of the 2020 election.
John Eastman Offers Warped View of 2020 Election, the January 6 “incursion into the Capitol,” and His Attempt to Subvert Election, in Supreme Court Brief Seeking to Erase District Court Case Finding He and Trump Likely Participated in a Crime
election subversion risk, Supreme CourtRICK HASENEdit
Via Tierney Sneed at CNN, comes this cert. petition before the Supreme Court in No. 22-1138. Eastman is asking for a Munsingwear vacatur of a federal district court ruling, which would wipe that case off the books on grounds it is moot. The case held that Trump and Eastman likely committed a crime in how they tried to interfere with the electoral college vote and turn an election loser into an election winner. Eastman now argues the case is moot because the documents and been released, and the ruling “created a stigma for both Petitioner and his client, the former President of the United States and current candidate for the presidency.”
Of particular interest to me was Eastman’s warped view of the facts of the 2020 election aftermath in his brief. It makes no mention of the crimes that Eastman and Trump were accused of participating in, only indirectly suggesting that Eastman did nothing wrong.
It also wrongly suggests that because the Wisconsin Supreme Court more than a year after the 2020 election found the use of drop boxes did not comply with Wisconsin law, that “thousands of illegal votes [were] included in certified votes in the election.” That is false. There was no finding that any illegal votes were cast in Wisconsin via drop boxes, even if the method used to collect those ballots cannot be used in future elections. Teigen v. Wis. Elections Comm’n, 976 N.W.2d 519 (Wis. 2022), did not involve any allegation that ballot drop boxes were used to commit election fraud, and there was no credible evidence presented that drop boxes in Wisconsin or anywhere else facilitated such fraud. Id. at 583 (Ann Walsh Bradley, J., dissenting) (“There is no evidence at all in this record that the use of drop boxes fosters voter fraud of any kind. None. And there certainly is no evidence that voters who used drop boxes voted for one candidate or party or another, tilting elections either direction.”); see also Trump v. Biden, 951 N.W.2d at 583 (Hagedorn, J., concurring) (“At the end of the day, nothing in this case casts any legitimate doubt that the people of Wisconsin lawfully chose Vice President Biden and Senator Harris to be the next leaders of our great country.”).
Eastman’s brief also wraps itself in the most extreme version of the independent state legislature theory, suggesting any time a state or local administrator administered an election in a way not explicitly described in a state statute, the election was conducted illegally. (See my amicus brief in Moore v. Harper for the absurdity of this position.)
Given Ginni Thomas’s involvement in some of these same events, I hope that Justice Thomas will be recusing from considering this cert. petition.
