Donald Trump’s coup-plotting associates are going through some things, as he might say.
Several of the people who were tapped to carry out Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power have run into financial and/or legal trouble ever since.
That includes Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who’s facing criminal charges and civil litigation for his role in the scheme; Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to a felony in Georgia's 2020 election interference case and may have withheld information from other investigators; and Peter Navarro, who went to prison this week over contempt charges relating to the federal Jan. 6 probe.
And then there's former Trump campaign lawyer John Eastman, who’s defending himself against criminal charges in Georgia and potential disbarment in California for his alleged role in devising and executing the coup plot. He’s also an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal Jan. 6 case against Trump, and special counsel Jack Smith’s office was reportedly still focused on Eastman as of late last year. Oh, and he already abruptly retired from his job as a law professor at a California university amid the controversy.
(In an August statement, Eastman's legal team called Smith's indictment a "misleading presentation of the record" that was intended "to cast ominous aspersions" on Trump's "close advisors.")
Given all that, Eastman appears to be in dire financial straits, and according to Right Wing Watch, has been portraying himself as a Christian nationalist hero to grift off of the MAGA movement’s most religious supporters.
The outlet reports that Eastman appeared virtually Monday at an event held by the Salt and Light Council, a Christian nationalist organization that promotes “biblical citizenship.” At the event, Eastman made several self-aggrandizing remarks portraying himself as a Christian holy warrior who’d been “cast in the forefront of this battle” against “tyranny.”
And then, of course, there was his pitch:
During his Salt and Light presentation, Eastman promoted his page on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, where people have contributed more than $630,000 to his legal defense fund so far. He said he’s “about a million in the hole beyond that right now,” adding that he thinks his total legal costs will run between $3 million and $3.5 million.
For the unaware, GiveSendGo is a crowdfunding site popular among neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists. And Eastman, one of the most recognizable figures on the platform, is basically using it to pass around the collection plate hoping to shake loose some donations … in Jesus’ name.
The fact that he has to ask for the money in the first place underscores the precarious financial situations Trump and many of his allies — particularly, lawyers such as Giuliani and Eastman — have created for themselves by backing dubious election schemes.
Eastman clearly isn’t breaking the mold in his response, either. In fact, he seems to have perfected a Trumpian routine: get into trouble, drape yourself in the Bible, and hope your followers are too blinded by the “light” to see the obvious grift.