Tag: law

A Portrait in Criminal Defamation

Earlier today, I received an email from someone named Roland Gamp, which quoted an email from someone else named Catherine Boss, supposedly sent on Monday, which I did not see or receive. He wrote:

My colleague Catherine Boss sent you an enquiry on Monday (see email below). Unfortunately, we have not yet received a reply from you to our questions. In the meantime, we have found further statements from you which make your radical right-wing stance clear and which are racist, sexist and discriminatory. We would like once again to give you the opportunity to comment. We are extending the deadline and you could respond until 4 pm today in the afternoon. If we do not hear anything by then, we will note in the article that you have not responded to requests.

Thank you very much and kind regards,

Roland Gamp
Reporter Recherchedesk Tamedia
+41 79 [redacted] (Mobile)
roland.gamp@tamedia.ch

Tamedia AG, Werdstrasse 21, CH-8021 Zürich

I responded to him as follows.

Dear Mr. Gamp and Ms Boss,

I am pleased to respond to your request for comment. Please note in your article that I have responded in a timely manner to your urgent request and be very sure to accurately quote my following response to you in full.

“I look forward to the opportunity to file a criminal defamation complaint against Mr. Roland Gamp and Ms Catherine Boss, as well as their employer, the TX Group media house, under Articles 173 and 177 of the Swiss Criminal Code.”

Regards,
Vox Day

Amusingly enough, these intrepid reporters appeared to take my clear warning that they were about to step over the line of criminal defamation in Switzerland as mere rhetoric. Which is to say that they did not quote my response, as I specifically required, and instead ran an error-filled hit piece attempting to discredit me as a “misogynist” and a Hitler sympathist, among other things, as well as demanding my prosecution by the authorities for offenses “against the anti-racist norm.”

Needless to say, the Legal Legion is already on the case and we will definitely be filing criminal complaints of defamation (Article 173) and insult (Article 177) against Messrs. Sylvain Besson and Roland Gamp, and Ms Catherine Boss.

A figure of the American radical right takes over a Swiss castle
The castle of Cressier, in Fribourg, has been bought by the misogynist and nationalist blogger Vox Day. He wants to turn it into a hotel to accommodate his supporters. The Commune says “to monitor the situation”.

It is a place full of history and, according to the Confederation, a “cultural property of national importance”. The castle of Cressier, in the canton of Fribourg, is a delightful residence of blonde stone, with rooms decorated with frescoes and surrounded by a vast garden. It has just been bought by a foreigner, and not just any foreigner: its new owner is a prominent blogger of the American radical right, who intends to save “white people”.

He is 53 years old and lives with his family in the Broye region of Vaud. He presents himself as a philosopher, editor and author, notably of comic books and video games. He speaks only under his pen name, Vox Day.

In the United States, Vox Day is considered an important representative of the alt-right, which has gained visibility in the wake of Donald Trump. According to American researcher Damon Berry, Vox Day defines the alt-right as nationalist, opposed to globalization, gender equality, and committed to the “right to exist” of ethnically homogenous states. This places it on the extreme right of the European political spectrum.

On the internet, Vox Day summarizes the alt-right – to which he avoids being directly attached – as the defense of “the existence of the white man and the future of white children”. The blogger also confesses a certain admiration for Adolf Hitler. “National Socialism is not only human logic, it is also much more logical and true than communism, feminism or secular Zionism,” the Minnesota-born American writes on his blog.

That Vox Day has set its sights on the Château de Cressier is perhaps no accident. The old house belonged for a long time to Gonzague de Reynold, a conservative writer from Fribourg, an admirer of the authoritarian regimes of the 1930s, who became a leading figure of the Swiss “spiritual defense” during the Second World War.

On social networks, the list of extremist and misogynistic statements of Vox Day is long. In 2015, he stated in an interview that African-Americans are genetically 500 times more likely than white Americans to be prone to violence. After an Islamist attack in Manchester in 2017, he posts a photo of Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who killed 69 young people on the Norwegian island of Utøya, with the caption, “Saint Breivik, pray for us.”

Vox Day has no problem displaying a retrograde view of women. “If a society cannot persuade women to marry, bear and raise children, it has no choice but to force them to do so or die,” he wrote in a tweet that has since been made inaccessible, as Vox Day has been banned from Twitter.

On the war in Ukraine, his opinion is just as clear-cut: the aggression is the work of “imperial America”, which has put Russia in a situation of compulsion. He calls the West “Clown World”, while Russia would represent “Sovereign World”. At the end of February, he titled his blog, “Grandiose stupidity in Switzerland.” And criticized the fact that the President of the Confederation Ignazio Cassis has sided with the European Union sanctions.

Finally, Vox Day posts the same opinions about the coronavirus pandemic. The vaccine has killed more people than Covid itself, he wrote in March.

Where does Vox Day publish his tirades from? On the internet, he gives the impression of living in Italy. But our research shows that the right-wing populist and his family of five have been living in the countryside of the Broye vaudoise for over ten years.

His messages are aimed at an American audience, but he is clearly broadcasting them from Switzerland. This raises the question of whether some of his statements fall under the anti-racist norm. This type of offence must be prosecuted by the authorities. To date, we are not aware of any proceedings against him.

Vox Day has been expelled from the American Science Fiction Writers Club. He is also blocked from Twitter. Instead, he developed the site “Infogalactic”, described as a “Wikipedia for the alt-right” by the “Washington Post”. He also created a social network, “Social Galactic”, which is owned by a company in Zug.

For the time being, the historic monument is already available for rent, for about 400 francs per night. In Cressier, the Commune only recently learned that the castle was available for rent, after having conducted research. They thought that the family of T. B. would eventually move from the canton of Vaud to Cressier.

For the commune’s mayor, David Humair, the case presents a “challenge,” as he puts it. But so far, we have had absolutely no problems with the new owners,” he says. And as long as it stays that way, I don’t see any need to act.” He’s not responsible for the political stance of his residents; that’s their private business, the mayor says again. “But we are carefully monitoring the situation since the arrival of this person in Cressier and we are ready to take action if necessary,” he says. Without specifying what exactly he means by that.

As for Vox Day, he refused to answer our questions, contenting himself with threatening us with a criminal complaint for defamation.

In Switzerland, Vox Day’s ideology is disseminated in books that can be purchased from the Zurich publisher Orell Füssli. On its website, the American author offers “Cuckservative”, a book that shows “how 50 years of immigration has lowered the average IQ in the United States”. Orell Füssli explains that it does not ban books from its catalog because of the authors’ personal opinions. A wide range of books contributes to the diversity of opinions, according to the publisher. Which says only two Vox Day books have been sold on its site since 2016.

Swiss SJWs are at least a decade behind their US counterparts, who have learned to be considerably more careful before swinging for the fences like this. How many errors did you notice? I count 12 factual errors and 3 egregious misrepresentations, but I may have missed one or two. They also haven’t gotten the message from the US media that a) the once-terrifying Alt-Right is now a well-coiffed CNN mouthpiece, and b) the threat to Clown World doesn’t just come from sovereign nations such as China and Russia, but also Christian Nationalists like yours truly.

Unsurprisingly, this inept hit piece relies upon both misinformation and disinformation, omitting the aspects of my words that provide the obvious context necessary to understand their meaning. For example, it’s not hard to see how this sentence could be portrayed as “a certain admiration for Hitler”, right?

“National Socialism is not only human logic, it is also much more logical and true than communism, feminism or secular Zionism.”

But you’d have to be profoundly dishonest to do so, since it cannot reasonably be portrayed that way once the very next sentence is quoted. See the post dated 17 March 2015.

Salomon’s statement [that Mein Kampf is outside human logic] is more outrageous than anything Hitler wrote in the book. National Socialism is not only human logic, it is considerably more logical, and truthful, than Communism, feminism, or secular Zionism. That was part of the tragedy of Germany’s descent into it. Unlike the first two ideologies, it actually functioned effectively.

National Socialism is also cruel, pitiless, and militaristic, but those are undeniably human failings.

Indeed, one of the most striking things about Mein Kampf is that it is not, as one would tend to imagine, a wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth sort of text. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about it is how reasonable Hitler often sounds throughout. And that is possibly the best reason of all that it should be published; it is a vivid reminder that far from being “outside of human logic”, every rational man is capable of choosing between good and evil, and choosing between setting himself to achieving great good and committing great harm.

And, of course, their attempt to defame me as being sympathetic to National Socialism, and therefore, Hitler, required omitting pretty much every single reference I’ve ever made to both National Socialism and Hitler over the last 21 years, to say nothing of my publication of Martin van Creveld’s Hitler in Hell. It’s not as if my opinion on either subject is hard to find, and the proven fact is that I have absolutely zero sympathy for Adolf Hitler, the only German leader who somehow managed to be both more evil and less competent than Angela Merkel.

  • The list of things that Hitler did wrong is considerably longer than the list of things he did right. I mean, successfully bluffing the French and British governments, and stabbing the Soviets in the back first, hardly makes up for a) launching a two-front war by b) invading Russia, then c) unnecessarily declaring war on the most powerful industrial nation on Earth. Hitler wasn’t merely a complete failure, he was a guaranteed failure before the end of 1941.
  • I always find it amusing when people call me a Nazi. I have considerably more contempt for Nazis than the most sincere Nazi-hater. Those who hate the Nazis fear them and consider them to be evil and scary villains. I don’t fear them and I consider them to be inept, ignorant losers. I’m not counter-signaling here; I don’t counter-signal Communists or people with Down’s Syndrome either.
  •  I oppose 20 of the 25 points of the National Socialist political program, which is considerably more than the average Democrat or Republican does.

But this is nothing new. Conflict is in the air we breathe. And yes, that is a familiar sound you’re hearing. snicker-snack….

UPDATE: Three portraits, actually. You know, not only did these intrepid exemplars of attack journalism fail to provide any links to this blog or any other source, but they also mysteriously failed to mention is that according to SimilarWeb, this blog (4M) gets nearly 2x the traffic that their news site (2.2M) does.

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Protecting the Filthbloods

Laws are being passed to prevent discrimination against the genetically altered formerly human:

No longer sci-fi speculation, the transhuman revolution is real; it’s here; it’s unfolding in real time. Man’s transformation into machine – or at least something not entirely human — will accelerate rapidly in the coming decades.

The next milestone on the road to transhuman techno-hell is a most unorthodox piece of legislation in Chile – which, along with Argentina, is the global corporate technocracy’s beachhead on the South American continent. The new law “bans discrimination against mutants and genetically altered people“:

“Law No. 21.422 prohibits labor discrimination against mutations or alterations of genetic material, and in turn ‘prohibits demanding any certificate or test to verify that the worker does not have such alterations or mutations in his human genome.’”

Ultimately, whether the intent of the bill is to normalize and legalize genetically engineered human chimeras as “human,” or to disincentive employers from snooping into actual natural humans’ genetic makeup as a precondition for employment, or for some other purpose, remains unclear.

Given the recent track record of human rights abuses by Western governments admittedly captured by the World Economic Forum, the safe bet is on the first, more sinister objective.

Actually, this is probably not about transhumanism, as it is more likely that it is a response to growing awareness of the deleterious effects of the gene therapies that are the mRNA-based not-vaccines. Because once it becomes clear that the vaxxed are much more likely to keel over and die, or become very expensive medical liabilities, no corporation is going to want to be on the hook for their insurance bills.

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Blacks, Women, Hardest Hit

An English employment tribunal has ruled that calling a man “bald” is sex harassment.

Calling a man ‘bald’ is sex harassment, an employment tribunal has ruled after an employee complained about being called a ‘bald c***’.

As part of its ruling, the panel raised a previous tribunal case where a man was found to have sexually harassed a woman by remarking on the size of her breasts to rebut the firm’s point.

‘It is much more likely that a person on the receiving end of a comment such as that which was made in (that) case would be female,’ the tribunal said. ‘So too, it is much more likely that a person on the receiving end of a remark such as that made by Mr King would be male.

‘Mr King made the remark with a view to hurting the claimant by commenting on his appearance which is often found amongst men. The Tribunal therefore determines that by referring to the claimant as a ‘bald c***’…Mr King’s conduct was unwanted, it was a violation of the claimant’s dignity, it created an intimidating environment for him, it was done for that purpose, and it related to the claimant’s sex.’

Having happily gone clean – aka “skinhead” – for years back in my martial arts days, I’ve never been bothered about no longer being in possession of a luxurious full head of hair. That being said, it’s always puzzled me a little how it’s more or less considered fine to refer derisively to a man’s appearance even in professional situations while being employment suicide, if not literally criminal, to do so with regard to a woman’s.

In light of this ruling, I don’t expect that the custom of some women – and, of course, some black men – to refer negatively to the presumed size of a man’s genitalia is going to be very well-regarded going forward.

On the one hand, it’s ridiculous. On the other hand, it is a logical and even-handed application of a ridiculous standard.

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Rumors of Roe v Wade

A draft legal opinion written by Alito that indictes the Supreme Court has decided to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion has reportedly been leaked:

The US Supreme Court looks set to overturn a landmark ruling that effectively legalised abortions across America, handing the power to decide whether or not to permit the procedure back to individual states.

A draft legal opinion, which was leaked to Politico, reveals a majority of the court’s nine judges are in agreement on the issue which would be enough to force a change in the law – though their decision is not final until the ruling is officially published.

In the document, Justice Samuel Alito writes that Roe v Wade – the 1973 Supreme Court ruling which found that excessive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional – was ‘egregiously wrong from the start’ and ‘must be overruled’.

If the ruling is overturned, it would give individual states the power to decide on whether to ban abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group, has said that 26 states are ‘certain or likely’ to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Alito, who was nominated to the court in 2006 by George W Bush, also takes aim at another 1992 case – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – which upheld Roe’s findings.

He argues that Roe’s ‘reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. Far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.’

If the leak proves to be genuine – and the Supreme Court has not denied that it is – it would mark the first time that a draft opinion has ever appeared in public before being officially published, a move expected within the next two months.

This may or may not be legitimate, but I tend to suspect it is, because it’s exactly the sort of document some idiotic female clerk would feel justified in leaking in a desperate attempt to somehow prevent the decision from being published.

And the leak it’s real, it’s long past time to get rid of the evil, idiotic, and fictional “emanations and penumbras” that were invented by the Warren Court. It’s certainly going to be difficult for anyone to convincingly make the “my body, my choice” argument any longer after two years of vaccine mandates. The overturning of Roe v Wade would also prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Donald Trump was the best U.S. president since Andrew Jackson.

Next, do “posterity”.

UPDATE: Based on the reactions of former Supreme Court staff, it sounds as if the leak is real.

Just spoke with former Supreme Court clerk. They are horrified. This is a quote:

“This leak has to come from a clerk or Justice themselves. It is intended to blow up the court. Criminal investigation needs to happen now.”

They suggest Sotomayor has most radical leftist staff.

UPDATE: It wasn’t a woman, it was a Fake American.

Amit Jain, a clerk for Justice Sotomayor, is reported to be the individual responsible for leaking Justice Alito’s draft opinion.

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Good Thing He Doesn’t Fly Planes for a Living

The forced vaccination of airline pilots hasn’t caused any crashes of passenger airliners yet, but on April 9th, an American Airlines plane flying into Dallas was just six minutes away from crashing when its vaccinated pilot had a heart attack:

“My name is Bob Snow. I am an American Airlines Captain and have been a Captain for a number of years. My total service with the company is over 31 years. On Nov. 7, I was mandated to receive a vaccine. Quite literally, I was told if I did not receive the vaccination, I would be fired. This order was from our director of flight. So, under duress, I received the vaccine.

“Now just a few days ago, after landing in Dallas, six minutes after we landed, I passed out. I coded. I required three shocks. I had to be intubated. I’m now in ICU in Dallas. This is what the vaccine has done for me. I will probably never fly again, based upon the criteria the FAA establishes for pilots. I was hoping to teach my daughter to fly; she wants to be a pilot. Now that will probably never happen, all courtesy of the vaccine. This is unacceptable, and I’m one of the victims.

“You can see that this is an actual result of the vaccine for some of us. Mandatory, no questions asked, get the shot, or you’re fired. This is not the American way.”

Perhaps the most tragic thing is that when Captain Snow sues American Airlines, he will probably be informed that it was his choice to be vaccinated and that no one actually forced him to submit to genetic therapy. Therefore, the consequences are all on him.

He was merely coerced, threatened, browbeaten, and ordered to submit to it.

Remember this – REMEMBER THIS – the next time someone is attempting to “force” you into something. Evil always seeks your deceived consent.

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Those Who Live By the Party

May well see their political careers ended by the party. The British media is preparing the public for Boris Johnson’s long-overdue resignation:

Sue Gray’s long-awaited Partygate report will be so damning that Boris Johnson will have no choice but to resign as Prime Minister, a source has claimed.

A dossier of more than 300 images and 500 pages of information was handed to Scotland Yard by the senior civil servant, who led a Cabinet Office probe into the matter.

She was forced to delay the publication of her investigation into alleged parties held in Downing Street and Whitehall during England’s coronavirus lockdowns due to the Metropolitan Police commencing their own inquiry.

A total of 12 events are being investigated by the police, which include a ‘bring-your-own-booze’ garden party, a gathering in the Cabinet Office to mark Mr Johnson’s 56th birthday and a series of leaving dos.

In an interim report published in January, the Cabinet Office official said there had been ‘failures of leadership and judgment’ in No 10 over the so-called partygate saga.

The Times, citing an official it described as being familiar with the contents of the complete report, said Ms Gray’s full findings were even more personally critical of the Prime Minister and could end his premiership.

After leading the remnants of the British empire out of the European Union, Johnson could have been the Churchillian figure he dreamed of becoming. But unfortunately, he swallowed the Covid Kool-Aid, lurched from one media-driven crisis to the next, and arrogantly refused to follow the very rules he was imposing on the British people. His failure is entirely self-inflicted, and if Dominick Cummings is to be believed, was almost certainly inevitable due to his narcissistic character.

After being caught lying to Parliament; by centuries-old tradition, he should have resigned already.

The Hotness is Hellfire

SJWs are freaked out that the Right is finally getting serious about canceling their wicked culture:

You can be forgiven if you didn’t have “Right-Wing Jihad Against Disney” on your bingo card for 2022.

But I regret to tell you that the entrepreneurs of culture war have grown tired of ginning up indignation about “Drag Queen Story Hour,” CRT, and the cancellation of Dr. Seuss. And so they have found a bright new shiny object of outrage, that bastion of moral decadence and wokeness, the Walt Disney Company.

This is, of course, the Disney of Mary Poppins, Frozen, Snow White, Moana, Encanto, High School Musical, Finding Nemo, 101 Dalmatians, Fantasia, Coco, Epcot Center, Bambi, Cinderella, Ratatouille, Splash Mountain, Beauty and the Beast, Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, Space Mountain, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, The Princess and the Frog, Remember the Titans, The Mighty Ducks. Old Yeller, and the It’s a Small World After All ride.

But the company has now spoken out against Florida’s new law regulating instruction about sexuality (read gayness), and, since clickbait doesn’t click itself, the new hotness is canceling Disney.

Meanwhile, in Florida, the Devil Mouse is losing its special exemptions and legal statuses that made the Magic Pedo Kingdom possible.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday asked the state legislature to repeal a law that has given Walt Disney World special privileges for decades, allowing it to operate as a private government over its properties in the state.

On Wednesday, the Republican-led Florida Senate passed a bill that would eliminate a special tax district that has allowed Walt Disney Co. to govern the land where its theme parks sit, The Wall Street Journal reports. The move comes after Disney began engaging in politics, opposing parental rights legislation that restricts classroom instruction on gender and sexuality to young children.

The Disney measure now goes to the GOP-led Florida House which is expected to also approve it. DeSantis has indicated he will sign it.

It’s a good start. Now let’s see Congress repeal the ridiculous Copyright Term Extension Act that was enacted in 1998, aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

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The Republicans Cave, As Always

I very much doubt that anyone is surprised that the usual suspects switched sides in order to ensure that a pro-pedophile Negro is installed on the highest court in the land to rule over occupied America.

The Senate passed a procedural motion Monday night to proceed with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation – voting 53-47 to discharge her Supreme Court nomination from the Judiciary committee and bring up her name for a vote before the full chamber.

Moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah all joined Democrats after an 11-11 vote earlier on Monday left her Supreme Court nomination in a dead-lock.

Democrats want to vote on her confirmation by April 8, when Congress breaks for a two week spring recess. With a 50-50 split Senate, and the backing of at least three Republicans, Brown will all but assuredly be confirmed in the coming days.

Brown will be the first black woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court bench.

This does raise the obvious question: how do we know Brown is “the first black woman” given the impossibility of determining what a “black” or a “woman” is? For that matter, do we even still recognize the abstract and artificial concept of the number “one” representing some sort of theoretical precedent?

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How Lawyers Lie

First, read this post on ProFootballTalk concerning a claim made by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores and the response by the team’s lawyers.

The Dolphins have responded to a claim made by former head coach Brian Flores during an interview with Bryant Gumbel of Real Sports. In the interview Gumbel asked Flores if it was true “that you were asked to sign an NDA, a non-disparagement agreement” when the Dolphins fired him earlier this year. Flores said he was and left “a lot” of money on the table because it would have “silenced” him.

Flores said Dolphins owner Steve Ross presented him with the NDA and talked about it with him. The Dolphins called that “categorically false” in a statement released on Tuesday evening.

“This latest assertion by Brian Flores that Steve Ross mentioned an NDA to him is categorically false,” the statement said. “This just did not happen and we simply cannot understand why Brian continues this pattern of making unfounded statements that he knows are untrue. We are fully cooperating with the NFL investigation and look forward to all of the facts coming out which we are confident will prove that his claims are false and defamatory.”

Sounds convincing, right? Where is this guy coming from? The Dolphins simply cannot understand this pattern of unfounded, untrue statements! Of course, Florio of PFT is a lawyer, so unlike his readers – read the comments if you want to see the customary cluelessness of the average non-lawyer – he saw through the team’s statement immediately, as he next posted this:

Flores told Bryant Gumbel that the three-year head coach left a “lot” of money on the table by declining to sign a document that would have “silenced” him. The Dolphins issued a statement specifically denying that team owner Stephen Ross presented Flores with a non-disclosure agreement and spoke to Flores about it.

In response, the lawyers representing Flores posted the documents that Flores opted not to sign. The materials show that Flores specifically waived his buyout by not signing the documents that would have required him to forfeit any legal claims…. Thus, even if Ross wasn’t specifically involved in the communications regarding what Flores could and couldn’t say or do (oligarchy, after all, has its privileges), someone apparently was.

In other words, all the histrionic rhetoric about untrue and unfounded statements that are false and defamatory rely upon the team’s claim that it wasn’t Stephen Ross himself that offered him millions of dollars to sign an NDA, it was Stephen Ross’s representatives doing so on his behalf.

Keep this in mind any time you see a lawyer making a big deal about something being entirely and absolutely false. In most cases, the statement is 99 percent true, but there is some minor and irrelevant detail that isn’t correct. What is particularly dishonest is that they will a) use the detail as an excuse to deny the whole, then b) make an expanded statement that doesn’t refer to the errant detail at all and is completely false.

In the Miami case, the team lawyers actually came out and expanded “This latest assertion by Brian Flores that Steve Ross mentioned an NDA to him is categorically false” to “we did not ask Brian Flores to sign an NDA” even though the documentary evidence clearly proves that they did the latter.

Never forget that lawyers have absolutely no hesitation about lying to the media, the other party, and the judge in any and all circumstances. But they generally do so in a manner that the average individual is unlikely to easily see or understand.

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Twitter and Treason

Mike Pence not only failed to do his duty as Vice-President of the United States on January 6, he also orchestrated the false claim that he did not have the authority to reject illegitimate electoral votes despite a brilliant constitutional scholar making the clear case that he did.

J. Michael Luttig: I was first called by the vice president’s outside counsel, Richard Cullen, on the evening of Jan. 4. We now know that that was after the fateful Oval Office meeting that day between the president and vice president, where John Eastman made the argument that the vice president could overturn the election unilaterally as presiding officer.

Ryan Lizza: And you know John Eastman?

Luttig: John Eastman was one of my clerks — over 25 years ago — and Richard Cullen is one of my closest friends in all of life. And we had been, at that point, talking seemingly every day — if not multiple times a day — throughout the entire Trump administration because, of course, our close friend, Bill Barr, was attorney general.

So he called me. I was having dinner. No big deal: this is like your best friend calling. He called the night of the 4th and says, “Hey, Judge, what do you know about John Eastman?” And I said, “He was a clerk of mine 30 years ago.” He says, “Well, what else do you know?” I said, “I don’t know. John’s an academic, he’s a professor, he’s a constitutional scholar — and he’s a brilliant constitutional scholar.”

Lizza: This is sort of shocking to hear you say this, considering the way that most people have been introduced to John Eastman.

Luttig: Well, read everything that was written about him before, you know, Jan. 6.

Lizza: So that’s interesting: the person who was the architect of the attempted coup, essentially — I think it’s fair to use that language — was actually a well-respected legal mind with sound views of the Constitution and not some legal quack.

Luttig: That’s correct: The farthest thing from it. So Richard said, “Well, you don’t know, do you?” And I said, “Know what?” He said, “John’s advising the president and the vice president that the vice president has this authority [to reject electoral votes] on January 6” — two days hence. And I said, “Wow, no, I did not know that. Well, look, you can tell the vice president that I said that he has no such authority at all. And Richard said he knows that, I said OK, and we hung up.

The “legal authority” cited by Pence was a tweet from a man who didn’t know how to use Twitter and hadn’t even read the Constitutional case presented by the well-respected scholar. All the talk about a coup is nothing more than projection by the traitors who successfully accomplished one by stealing the election with around 20 million fake votes.

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