Even if the unfounded accusations of electoral fraud and the attempts of his clan to invalidate the 2020 presidential election still do not seem to hinder Donald Trump’s new presidential campaign, this past does not, paradoxically, spare the members of his guard close together.
Proof. On Wednesday, a judge of the California State Bar Court, Yvette Roland, recommended the disbarment of lawyer John Eastman, former dean of the Faculty of Law at Chapman University, due to his contribution to the attempt to obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election confirming Joe Biden’s victory. It played out in chaos, in Washington, on January 6, 2021.
The judge retained 10 of the 11 charges against this close friend of the ex-president, in particular those of “deception towards a court”, “false declaration” or even conspiracy to “obstruct the transfer of power”. The final decision on this delisting is now in the hands of the California Supreme Court.
Coincidentally, the former advisor to Donald Trump has just been hit by this sanction the day after the indirect recognition in Arizona by Kari Lake of his guilt in a defamation trial. She is accused of purposely spreading lies about the integrity of the state’s election process by specifically targeting an official responsible for overseeing voting in Maricopa County. This county was energized by the Trumpists in the wake of their defeat in 2020. Kari Lake, candidate for governor of Arizona, threw fuel on the embers of the conspiracy in 2022, after the polls did not grant him this title.
On Tuesday, her lawyers filed a “motion for default judgment” stating that she “does not dispute her guilt,” NBC reported. This person close to Donald Trump is now seeking to instead challenge the damages that the courts could award to Stephen Richer, a civil servant who accuses him of defamation.
On March 19, Peter Navarro, advisor to the leader with autocratic overtones during his years at the White House, also made history by becoming the first member of Trump’s circle to enter prison. He was sentenced to 4 months in prison for defying a subpoena to appear before the committee of parliamentarians responsible for shedding light on the insurrection launched against the Capitol.
These three key players in the populist’s conspiratorial cosmogony thus extend the increasingly long list of members of his entourage who, for several months, have been caught up in the actions taken to help the republican illegally remain in power.
Mistreated accomplices
Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer Rudy Giuliani is one of them. Since last July, he too has been facing a recommendation for disbarment from the Bar submitted by a Washington disciplinary committee. His peers accuse him of having “undermined democracy” through “frivolous” and “destructive” actions aimed at derailing the 2020 electoral process, by making public claims of electoral fraud without be able to provide proof.
Jenna Ellis, close to Rudy Giuliani, was reprimanded by the Colorado Bar a year ago after admitting to making 10 false statements about the results of the last presidential vote on behalf of the former president. president and his team. She had, among other things, claimed on Fox News that 500,000 ballots had been cast illegally in the ballot boxes. A totally imaginary fraud in opposition to the facts revealed by dozens of investigations, including several led by Republicans. Mme Ellis also pleaded guilty to several counts of attempting to invalidate the elections in Georgia. The lawyer was accused, alongside Donald Trump, of having plotted to “make voters appear” in favor of the self-proclaimed billionaire in this state. Georgia was won by the Democrats by a slim margin of 11,700 votes.
Lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, two key figures in the 2020 Trump campaign seeking to corrupt voting to keep the Republican in power, also pleaded guilty in the same case. A trial date has still not been set.
Mme Powell, a Texas lawyer, helped, among other things, undermine public confidence in Dominion voting machines, a campaign supported by Fox News in the wake of Trump’s defeat. The project ended in a defamation lawsuit that cost $787 million in damages, paid to the company by the ultraconservative media flagship of the Murdoch empire. Kenneth Chesebro, for his part, accompanied John Eastman in his plan to derail the certification of the vote on January 6, 2021 by seeking to obtain the complicity of the vice-president, Mike Pence – in vain -, and by setting up a forgery scheme major voters to achieve their goals.
“John Eastman […] will be deregistered. […] Peter Navarro is in prison. And Trump wins tournaments at his own golf club. How many idiots will it take to drag this guy with them to hell? » asked psychologist Mary L. Trump, niece of the ex-president and sharp critic of the populist, in a message sent on network.
Undoubtedly much more than that, according to the main person concerned, who, this week, far from seeking to dissociate himself from this attempted electoral theft of 2020 which damages the reputation of several of his close friends, has rather opted to revive the slogan used during this era: Stop the Steal (Stop the steal). The formula was intended to be a simplistic accusation made wrongly and without proof of the existence of electoral fraud orchestrated according to him by the Democrats.
“Stop the steal,” he said on his social network on Tuesday as he left a New York court, which set April 15 for the start of his first criminal trial. The first for a former president. He is accused of fraud to hide an extramarital affair during his 2016 campaign.
The rest of the message resumed his usual attacks against Joe Biden and several representatives of the world of justice, whom he accuses of conspiring against him to prevent him from returning to the White House.
The call raised concerns among several political analysts in the United States, Stop the Steal being the name given to the movement that led thousands of its supporters to Washington in 2021 and unleashed the historic and traumatic attack on the dome of American democracy.