The second day of the State Bar of California’s (SBC) disbarment trial of Trump attorney John Eastman on Tuesday featured mostly direct and cross-examination of the prosecution’s star witness, former Pence attorney Greg Jacob. Jacob was put on the witness stand by the SBC to debunk Eastman’s advice that Vice President Mike Pence did not have the authority to reject electoral slates from states suspected of going to Joe Biden due to election fraud, but Jacob gave testimony to the contrary several times.
Eastman’s attorney Randy Miller asked Jacob about a memo he wrote where he stated that “scholars disagree” whether it’s the vice president’s responsibility to substantively deal with accepting electoral slates. Jacob admitted, “There is a section in the Constitution that is at best ambiguous whether the vice president can reject electoral slates.” He cited three legal scholars who wrote articles arguing that the vice president has somewhat of a substantive role in that area. He said this question was “debated and disputed” in law review articles.
Jacob said Hawaii encountered a similar contentious situation in 1961, when Hawaii’s electors submitted a slate of electors for Richard Nixon, then Democrats submitted a competing uncertified slate for John F. Kennedy. After court proceedings over the matter finished, it was determined that Kennedy really won, and so the slate for Kennedy was ultimately accepted.
When confronted about law review articles that appeared to conclude that the vice president has substantive authority in this area, Jacob dismissed them, saying the authors had “perverse incentives” to write articles that will become well read. One of those law review articles discussed how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both ran into similar dilemmas when they were vice presidents.
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times