About
David Eastman is a right-wing Republican state representative in Alaska and a member of the Oath Keepers militia. He helped spread the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election and flew to Washington in January 2021 to participate in the March to Save America on the Ellipse. Attempts were made to keep him off the state ballot in 2022 due to his affiliation with the militia group, but after a court ruled that he could run again, he won his third term.
In spring 2022, the Republican House Minority Caucus voted to remove Eastman from the group for being “too disruptive.” The move came after years of strife between him and fellow lawmakers. According to KTOO public radio, Eastman was “formally reprimanded by the House after claiming that women in rural villages try to get pregnant so they can get a free trip to a city for an abortion.” In 2020, the minority suspended him from legislative committees and placed him on “probation” after conflicts with fellow Republicans—many of whom actually campaigned against him in the next election, which he won anyway.
In February 2023, the entire Alaska House voted to censure Eastman for offensive comments he had made at a committee meeting about abused children in the state. “It is important to remember regarding that member from Wasilla that over the years he has shown Alaska who he is, posting on his website a photo of himself standing next to a quote from Adolph Hitler that calls for the extermination of people, and yet he has been reelected three times to his seat,” noted Andrew Gray, a representative from Anchorage. “We must respond as a body. We must do something. This body must act.”
Educated at West Point, Eastman served in the military until 2011, according to his state legislator’s bio. He has been a Tea Party activist in the past and is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that creates “model legislation” to be implemented at the state level.
January 6, 2021
- Eastman traveled to Washington to participate in the March to Save America at the Ellipse. According to the AP, he said he went to hear Trump speak.
- As protesters left the rally and marched to the Capitol, Eastman spoke with Alaska Public Radio, saying: “I know there’s quite the fight on the national level and [it’s] important that Alaska be represented in that fight, and that Alaskans concerned on voter integrity have a voice.”
- Later, Eastman claimed (without providing any evidence) that Antifa had been behind the violent attack on the Capitol and the lawmakers and staff members at work inside.
The Big Lie
- On Dec. 10, 2020, Eastman signed an amicus brief for a Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the election in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
- On Jan. 5, 2021, Eastman wrote on his website that the “election process that has been observed thus far by the American people has been abused to such a degree that, in my view, it can no longer be called an election. To call what the American people have observed ‘an election’, under the United States Constitution, would be fundamentally dishonest.”
Election Audits
- In June 2021, Eastman visited Arizona to observe the audit being undertaken by Cyber Ninjas, a pro-Trump organization that spread disinformation about the 2020 election.
- In a Sept. 24, 2021 blog post titled “Election Cheaters and their Day of Reckoning,” Eastman wrote: “Regardless of whether fake ballots are uncovered in Arizona this afternoon, or how many are uncovered, the prevailing contempt of those in government for the electorate is a deadlier poison to America than any amount of fraud uncovered in a single election. It is the problem behind the problem of election fraud. In fact, it is that contempt that predates the fraud and justifies it in the minds of those who sanction it.”