Eastman reveals disagreement in Trump camp on best way to maintain presidency

In an interview with the Guardian, the attorney behind the co-called "coup memo" delivered to Donald Trump detailing a possible way for him to remain in office despite the will of the voters, explained that he fully detailed to the former president and former vice president Mike Pence that it was not his recommendation and that he would have some other scenarios he would provide them at a later date.

As part of the Guardian's timeline of the January 6th insurrection, Ed Pilkington reveals the paper spoke with attorney John Eastman who attempted to set the record straight and made it appear that Trump jumped at the first option presented to him which led to the rift with Pence -- and was then followed with threats as the Washington Post reported on Friday night.

As Eastman explained he was approached by Trump "legal shop" and asked to create a memo detailing scenarios to keep Trump in office, and the first one he created was the Pence overruling the electors -- but that he explicitly told them it was not his "preferred option," Pilkington wrote.

"They said can you focus first on the theory of what happens if there are not enough electoral votes certified. So I focused on that. But I said: 'This is not my recommendation. I will have a fuller memo to you in a week outlining all of the various scenarios,'" Eastman explained.

He added, "The advice I gave the vice-president very explicitly was that I did not think he had the authority simply to declare which electors to count" or to "simply declare Trump re-elected," he continued.

"The vice-president turned to me directly and said, 'Do you think I have such powers?' I said, 'I think it's the weaker argument,'" the attorney recalled.

According to the lawyer, his preferred legal strategy was for Pence to "adjourn the joint session of Congress on 6 January and send the electoral college votes back to states that Trump claimed he had lost unfairly so their legislatures could have another go at rooting out the fraud and illegality the president had been railing about since election day," the Guardian report states.

Eastman explained, "My advice to the vice-president was to allow the states formally to assess the impact of what they had determined were clear illegalities in the conduct of the election."

According to Pilkington, "Eastman insisted to the Guardian that he had only been presenting scenarios to the vice-president, not advice. He said that since news of his memos broke he had become the victim of a 'false narrative put out there to make it look as though Pence had been asked to do something egregiously unconstitutional, so he was made to look like a white knight coming in to stop this authoritarian Trump'."

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