John Eastman on the Georgia election conspiracy case

John Eastman says he's innocent and he told us if he was ever guilty of anything it was giving bold legal advice to Donald Trump. Eastman was a little-known law professor who found himself at the center of history—among the architects of President Trump's bid to stay in power. One judge called Eastman's strategy "a coup in search of a legal theory." Today Eastman faces nine criminal counts in Georgia's election conspiracy case. And we found he's still handing out bold legal advice—this time to himself. facing possible years in prison he agreed to talk with us.

John Eastman: Well, that was the first advice I got from my legal team when I put them together, is that we don't talk about anything. In normal times, that's the right advice for lawyers to give their criminal defendant clients. Um, but I quickly determined that this fight was much more about the criminal law, the specific law, and a public fight. We did nothing wrong. And it's important to counteract the false narratives on that because all of my actions were designed to investigate illegality in the election to see if they had an impact.

Sixty three-year-old John Eastman graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and was dean of Chapman University's law school in California. He views the world from the far right and has said the political left is an existential threat.

John Eastman: We're no longer disagreeing about means to get to shared ends. We've got wings of the two parties that disagree fundamentally on the ends and the purpose of our government.

Scott Pelley: Existential, you said.