The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, is in its sixth week. Wednesday featured more testimony by Berkeley constitutional law professor John Yoo, who was grilled by State Bar of California attorney Duncan Carling about his opinion that there was no fraud in the 2020 election—the day concluded with some direct examination of Joseph Fried, an auditor who authored the book Debunked? investigating the allegations of election fraud.
Eastman attorney Randy Miller resumed his examination of Yoo (pictured above), questioning him extensively about a law review article he co-authored in 2022, which found that the vice president has substantive authority over accepting or rejecting disputed electoral slates. Yoo discussed what the article said about the 1876 congressional debates over how to handle contested electoral slates, where Representative James Garfield (R-OH) — who later became president — argued that the vice president had a substantive role.
“In Garfield’s view, the power to resolve disputed vote counts lay, in the first instance, with the Vice President,” Yoo said in the article. “That power was not exclusively the Vice-President’s, however, but was subject to congressional regulation.”
Yoo said Garfield indicated it was up to the vice president unless there was legislation otherwise. Representative George Henry White (R-NC) said only the vice president can decide, regardless of what Congress did. Another view expressed by some representatives would leave such disputes up to the states.
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times