I appeared on April 25, 2024, on Chicago’s Morning Answer with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson (no relation) to talk about the Arizona criminal indictment of 11 Republicans for an alleged “fake electors” scheme. We also discussed the disbarment of John Eastman, one of the people indicted in Arizona, and also at the very end the campus pro-Hamas encampments.
I’ve been on this show many times, and it’s one of my favorite venues because we have enough time to cover issues, and the hosts are very knowledgable.
Proft (04:15):Help us understand those indictments handed down by the grand jury convened by Attorney General Mayes in Arizona.WAJ (04:25):I think the first thing people need to understand is that we’re entering the final run of the 2024 election, which includes a very important Senate race in Arizona, and that timing cannot be ignored.These are events that took place three and a half years ago. This indictment could have been brought three years ago, or two years ago. There is a reason why it is being brought right now. It is to freeze the Arizona Republican Party so that they cannot organize themselves to win that Senate seat. That’s what this is all about, and nobody should kid themselves. So whether there’s merit to this indictment or there’s no merit to the indictment, it should have been brought one or two years ago. There’s a reason it’s being brought right now. So that’s the first thing that I think people need to understand, that this is not being brought in good faith. It’s being brought as an electoral move. If it were not, if it were brought in good faith, it could have been indicted a year or two ago….Proft (05:30):So then, we should expect since Dana Nessel, the AG of Michigan, has a similar investigation ongoing. We should expect that indictment maybe right after Labor Day?WAJ (05:40):Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s what’s going on this year. All of these Trump indictments, with the exception of the Mar-a-Lago one, where the events took place later, all of these lawsuits, criminal prosecutions are regarding events that took place over three years ago. They are brought so that the trials will take place in this election year, including the one that’s ongoing now in Manhattan, [which] involves events six or seven years ago.So this is a complete abuse by Democrat prosecutors of their power. As we know. you can get an indictment of just about anything. But again, regardless of the merits, why is it being done now? And we know why it’s being done now.Going to the merits of it. the claim is that there was a fraud perpetrated on the Congress and the public regarding the Arizona election. The problem with that, is that there was no deception. No one was deceived…This took place in plain sight. It was in the media. People were on TV. They were going present an alternative slate of electors in Arizona and other states. They thought the election was fraudulent, except nobody was deceived by this. So that is the other thing.You have to remember, this is presented primarily as a fraud case, that they fraudulently tried to deceive, to deprive the voters of their vote, but nobody was deceived. People disagreed. They run through in the indictment page after page after page of legal challenges that just proves no one was deceived. They were fighting this. You can disagree with it, you can say Trump had no basis to do it. It was stupid, whatever you want to say about it. But no one was deceived.Proft (07:40):Well, I mean, this, this perfectly follows there was no crime committed in Manhattan, but there was something, you know, that seems malicious, illicit or scandalous that was done. And so, wwe’ll get to what the crime is. So, you know, at some point Arizona will get to maybe what the crime is, but for now, we’ll just call it fraud. Just like we’re supposed to call hush money and hush money sounds underhanded even criminal then we don’t need any sort of underlying crime per state statutes. We’ll just go with the politically salacious.WAJ (08:17):And that’s what’s happening. I mean, this is really, frankly disgusting that all of these prosecutions were delayed until an election year. They could have been brought earlier. Again, whether they have merit or not, fine, bring your prosecution, but don’t time it so as to paralyze one of the parties in an election year.Amy Jacobson (08:37):So just walk us through how this is gonna affect Kerry Lake Senate race.WAJ (08:41):Well, they’ve named, I forget the exact count, but several, at least several, senior Republican officials in Arizona. So they’re essentially trying to freeze the Arizona Republican party. That doesn’t mean Kari Lake can’t run for office. She can. That doesn’t mean she can’t win, but when you paralyze a party that has a huge impact.You’ll remember the John Doe investigations in Wisconsin, I forget what the year was, many years ago, where they used the John Doe law in Wisconsin to investigate and raid virtually the entire Wisconsin conservative movement to freeze them. And that’s what’s going on here. These are prosecutions, the use of prosecutorial power to freeze a political party in an election year. And that’s what people need to understand about it.Proft (09:35):Well, it’s more than freezing. What they’re really going to do is now they’ve got this indictment, and now they’re going to run tens of millions of dollars of ads saying the Arizona Republican party leadership has been indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election. And Kerry Lake is their new puppet, and any other candidate running in Arizona is the puppets. They’re all fruit of this poisonous tree of destroying our democracy of a coup d’etat. And so that’s what’s going to happen. This is a messaging play in addition to freezing the Republican party.WAJ (10:08):I think you’re absolutely right. I assume they’re going to do perp walks here and that will be in TV ads. It’s even worse than I described it. Thank you for pointing that out. This is all good campaign ad preparation. They’re getting ready to film their campaign ads.Proft (10:29):…. So since I think Eastman is one of those indicted, we were just talking about this with Roger Kimball before you joined us, and, you know, the whole treatment of John Eastman, since he has been a bit of a flashpoint and he’s been disbarred now, and he’s been indicted as part of the crew in Fulton County and now in Arizona. And again, you can disagree with John Eastman’s legal theory and legal advice, and many do. But, you know, in your professional estimation, did he do something that was a disbarable offense or an indictable offense by providing this advice and counsel, even if it wasn’t shared by other similarly experienced attorneys?WAJ (11:34):No, I, I don’t think he did. AndI say that as somebody who, I think it was New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day of that year, I wrote an article on my website [here] that I do not think Mike Pence had any discretion in terms of accepting the electoral count certificates, that there was no constitutional basis for the arguments that were being made that he could just pick and choose and decide who he wants to win. So I say that as somebody who disagreed with John Eastman at the time, on the record. But you know, they have not only criminalized politics, they have now criminalized lawyering if you’re a Republican lawyer.So people make aggressive arguments in court all the time. People make arguments for the extension of the law. I think Eastman’s argument was wrong. I don’t think it rose to such a frivolous level that you should lose your Bar license over it. I mean, that’s very rare. That’s very unusual. There was no fraud perpetrated on a court. There was just a legal theory and a legal argument that the courts disagreed with.So this is really disgusting what is happening in the country through the use of not just prosecutor’s offices, but now bar authorities. There is a group, I think they’re called the 65 Group or something like that, which is going around the country trying to get Republican lawyers disbarred. They have weaponized not just the Democrat prosecutorial offices, they are now weaponizing Bar counsel and they’re now weaponizing the disciplinary process. And they have said explicitly, they advertise it, that they want to make Republican lawyers toxic in their communities.So people need to wake up. What’s going on in this country is really totalitarian, and it is an attempt to not enforce the rule of law, but to destroy the rule of law and to prevent Republicans from ever mounting an election challenge again. What Republican lawyer, if there is an alleged fraud in the next election, is going to dare to raise legal arguments against it knowing that John Eastman has now been disbarred for that?
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