by “It’s just a matter of math,” Northon said on a different episode of Gruber’s podcast in late November. “We have a PhD, Dr. Zhang, Jennie Zhang from Hillsdale College, who just did the math. And when you do the calculations, it shows not just a handful of improper votes or a handful of illegal votes, but hundreds of thousands, more than 500,000 in the general elections alone.” He was referring to Qianying Zhang, a finance and economics professor who goes by the name Jennie and who was paid $5,000 by Amistad as an expert witness. Based on a survey conducted by a company run by a former Trump campaign aide, he estimated how many people had received absentee ballots they had not requested. (In an email, Zhang said that while Northon had offered a “plausible” account of his findings, calling the votes “incorrect” or “illegal” was “beyond the direct scope of my analysis.”)
In early December, Northon participated in a conference call with an old friend of Arnn’s from Claremont circles, attorney John Eastman. Northon, in his testimony before the House committee on January 6, said that this meeting, like the first, “was organized by some people from Hillsdale.” He specifically mentioned Spalding, dean of the university’s graduate school in Washington, something of a nexus in the capital for right-wing academics. Northon’s attorney, Chip Chamberlain, said in an email exchange that neither Arnn nor Spalding were on Eastman’s call. Northon, he said, simply “reviewed Dr. Spalding’s research on elections and constitutionalism prior to several court appearances.” (Spalding, in a statement through Hillsdale, said he had never met Northon.)
Northon told the committee on Jan. 6 that the two Michigan lawmakers who attended Giuliani’s meeting also participated in it, along with a third, Daire Rendón. (Rendon was charged last year in a separate case involving voting machine violations orchestrated by Trump allies.) Lawmakers “were people who wanted their colleagues in the House to do more,” Northon testified, adding: “That was the impetus for the Eastman Call.
Eastman was one of the legal architects of the strategy to deploy fake electors in states that Trump lost, in order to pressure Pence to give up certifying Biden on January 6 (he was indicted last year on charges related to this effort in Georgia, where he has pleaded not guilty). Now, on the conference call, he explained to lawmakers that the state Legislature had the power to take action on the election. “If anyone is going to do something about it, it’s them,” Northon remembers Eastman saying.
Northon also prepared a draft resolution for Republican leaders in the Legislature, hoping they would declare they were investigating the election. While writing the draft, he said, he showed it to Norton and Emily Davis, Hillsdale’s communications manager. When House investigators asked Northon about Hillsdale’s higher-ups submitting election-related documents, he said, “Well, I, I represented Hillsdale and all that, although this wasn’t something.” What I was doing for them, I thought they should be aware of it. that was happening. “I thought it was important to them.”
