The legal scholar widely reported to be co-conspirator No. 2 in Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s 45-page, four-count indictment of President Donald J. Trump, revealed by the prosecutor on August 1, said he is not backing down.

“With respect to questions as to whether Dr. Eastman is involved in plea bargaining, the answer is no. But if he were invited to plea bargain with either state or federal prosecutors, he would decline,” said the statement from Eastman’s attorneys Charles Burnham and Eugene Gorokhov.

“The fact is, if Dr. Eastman is indicted, he will go to trial. If convicted, he will appeal. The Eastman legal team is confident of its legal position in this matter,” they said.

John Eastman was one of the legal advisors working with then-President Donald Trump to respond to the election irregularities that marred the 2020 presidential election. Eastman’s focus was on the process of congressional certification of slates of electors from the states. He argued that Vice President Mike Pence, as the presiding officer of the January 6, 2021, certification, had the authority to send back elector slates to the states for further review.

In addition to Trump, there are six unnamed co-conspirators. The indictment described one of them in a way that matches Eastman:

Co-Conspirator 2, 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 presidential election.

Pence rejected this interpretation Eastman’s interpretation of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, but in that 2021-2022 congressional session, Republicans and Democrats came together to amend the law, so that Eastman’s view was no longer tenable.

What is telling is Smith’s assertion that the presiding officer was not presiding at all, and its implication that the certification of a presidential election by Congress was all kabuki theater.

The Left has hounded Eastman for both his legal opinions regarding the certification of the election and for his speech at the Stop the Steal rally held the morning of January 6.

Eastman was forced from his positions at the Chapman University Law School after campus protests. Chapman has also been targeted by the Soros-backed organization of leftwing attorneys who wage lawfare against lawyers who represent conservative clients called Project 65.

He is also the subject of a proceeding by the California Bar Association.

The lawyers also referred to the book “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” written by Harvey Silverglate, another member of the legal team, with a forward by Alan Dershowitz. The 2011 book predicted that the ever-expanding federal criminal code was liable to be misused for improper political purposes, they said.

“This prediction finds its fulfillment in the current administration’s use of heretofore obscure federal statutes to indict its leading political opponent in multiple jurisdictions,” they said.

Burnham and Gorokhov further said that Smith twists up the narrative in his indictment, so as paint a false picture of the days leading to the Jan. 6, 2021 challenges to some of the electors assigned to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“The latest indictment relies on a misleading presentation of the record to contrive criminal charges against presidential candidate Trump and to cast ominous aspersions on his close advisors,” they said.

Vice President Mike Pence addresses Congress, January 6, 2021. CREDIT: Senate TV

Although Pence cooperated with Smith, the lawyers accused the prosecutor of cherry-picking Pence’s statements regarding the election irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.

“For example, the uninitiated reader of the indictment would have no idea that former Vice President Pence is on record stating that in the 2020 election, there were ‘significant allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law,'” they said.

“This is but one example of the indictment’s false presentation of the record; countless more will be revealed in time,” they said.