Frank Schubert, the National Political Director for the anti-equality National Organization for Marriage, is urging NOM supporters to contribute to the legal defense fund for right-wing lawyer John Eastman, whose efforts to help former President Donald Trump stay in power after losing the 2020 election have him in serious legal trouble. Eastman’s legal defense fund is also soliciting contributions through Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, which currently lists more than $540,000 in contributions.
Eastman was indicted along with Trump and other co-conspirators in the criminal case brought by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis. In addition, Eastman is facing disbarment in California; those legal proceedings are currently under way.
In an email sent Friday to NOM supporters, Schubert claimed, “Radical leftists are trying to ruin him, bankrupt his family and send him to prison all because he helped President Trump.”
In reality, as documented by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, Eastman was involved in many aspects of Trump’s scramble to stay in power, which is reflected in the criminal charges he is now facing:
- Violation of the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act;
- Solicitation of violation of oath by public officer;
- Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer;
- Conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree;
- Conspiracy to commit false statements and writings;
- Conspiracy to commit filing false documents; and
- Filing false documents.
Eastman helped rile up the crowd at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse, making unfounded claims about voter fraud and “demanding” that Vice President Mike Pence block congressional affirmation of Biden’s Electoral College victory that afternoon. As the mob was attacking the Capitol, Pence’s chief counsel texted Eastman, “Thanks to your bullsh**t, we are now under siege.” In a response uncovered by the Jan. 6 committee, Eastman replied that “the siege is because you and your boss [Pence] did not do what was necessary.” Eastman wasn’t done, imploring Jacob “to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act] and adjourn for ten days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations.”
Eastman is unrepentant about his work for Trump, continuing to promote debunked election conspiracies and claiming that encouraging Pence to break the law on Trump’s behalf was justified to save America from the “existential threat” posed by “the modern left wing which is in control of the Democrat Party.” Eastman sought, unsuccessfully, to be included on Trump’s “pardon list.”
It’s not surprising to see Schubert and NOM rallying around Eastman, who has a long and sordid record as an anti-LGBTQ activist. A longtime chairman of NOM, Eastman called the 2003 Supreme Court decision overturning state laws that criminalized consensual gay sex “despotic.” In a 2015 speech to the Family Research Council, he defended Uganda’s notorious and brutal Anti Homosexuality Act. He attacked the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling and encouraged state officials to resist it. He has helped promote anti-LGBTQ policies around the world.
On other issues, Eastman has advocated for positions at the fringe of the right-wing legal movement. In 2020, he was deservedly mocked for a column in which he questioned then-Sen. Kamala Harris’s qualification to be vice president based on her immigrant parents. There’s more, as Right Wing Watch noted in a 2016 profile:
Eastman’s support for the Supreme Court’s infamous 1905 Lochner decision—which ushered in an era in which the court rejected economic and labor regulations—puts him in opposition to the late Antonin Scalia, who opposed the Lochner ruling.
Eastman has also taken a fringe position—one taken by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Eastman clerked—that the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion does not apply to the states, and has argued that a state taxing people to support an official church, as some states did early in the nation’s history, was not all that coercive.
Schubert has his own disreputable record. He oversaw the 2008 campaign to pass a ban on same-sex couples marrying in California and became notorious as the mastermind of an anti-marriage-equality strategy grounded partly in fear-mongering about marriage equality being a threat to children. Schubert was paid handsomely to take that destructive strategy to other states, and encouraged opposition to equality globally. After the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, he pushed NOM’s anti-trans campaigns.
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