John Eastman, the former dean of Orange County Law School who helped craft Donald Trump's legal strategy to retain power after losing his 2020 presidential bid, should be disbarred, a state Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday.
Judge Yvette Rowland's recommendation to revoke 63-year-old Eastman's license to practice law in California will go to the state Supreme Court, which has the authority to approve it.
In a marathon trial that lasted from June to November, the State Bar, the agency that regulates lawyers, said Eastman was not qualified to practice law for spreading false claims that fraud cost Trump the election and for promoting a false election scheme. To obstruct the counting of votes.
The bar association said Eastman sparked “the devastating and predictable chaos” when he stood next to fellow Trump adviser Rudolph Giuliani on January 6, 2021, and told a massive crowd that the election was rigged.
Eastman claimed he was acting in good faith and as a strong champion for his client. But state bar lawyers argued that “the evidence, including his often discredited trial testimony, shows that he held — and continues to hold — truth and democracy in contempt, willfully ignoring facts validating Biden's victory to advance a false narrative.” “It would harm democracy.” Ignoring the Constitution, disenfranchising millions of voters, and undermining a democratic election for the President of the United States in favor of his loyalty to Trump.
Instead of conducting honest research, Eastman “deliberately imitated the misleading opinions and narratives of unqualified, unvetted, and untrustworthy experts,” the attorneys said.
When Eastman urged the Georgia Senate to thwart the popular vote for Biden and pick Trump electors, he claimed there was rampant fraud in the state, including evidence of illegal votes from “as many as 2,500” imprisoned felons. The state will determine that only up to 74 potential felons voted. The Bar Association said Eastman knew or “deliberately overlooked” the falsity of the numbers he promoted, and relied on the affidavit of an accountant with no experience in statistics or elections.
Eastman sought to “create an illusion of legitimacy for an illegal effort to delay official recognition of Trump's clear defeat by any means necessary.”
In the months since Biden won the presidency, courts have repeatedly rejected Trump's election challenges, his attorney general has dismissed fraud influencing the election, and Eastman's emails, through January 2, 2021, show his awareness that “strong documented evidence of fraud… “He was absent.
However, Eastman's memos, presented at trial, laid out a strategy by which Vice President Mike Pence would block the certification of Biden's victory on January 6 by refusing to count electoral votes in swing states.
The bar said Eastman knew his plan was illegal, as evidenced by his opposition in December 2020 to filing a federal lawsuit to test his theory about Pence's power to reject voters. “The risk of getting a court ruling that Pence has no authority to reject Biden’s certified ballots is extremely high,” he wrote. Eastman wrote that Pence would do well to “act boldly and face the challenge.”
The bar alleged that Eastman promoted the “outlaw theory” that Pence could reject voters, hoping to “expand the window for further harm.” Eastman did not accept “an iota of responsibility for his misconduct”, showed a “complete and complete lack of remorse”, and instead portrayed himself as a victim of political persecution.
The Bar Association said Eastman's misconduct “strikes at the heart of what it means to be a lawyer — he abused his license in a dangerous and damaging way designed to undermine our democracy.”
During the trial, which took place in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, the attorneys called election officials from contested states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada to detail the steps they had taken to ensure a fair election. Eastman's legal team tried to show that illegal violations marred the contest, but at times, his witnesses seemed to undermine his case.
Testifying in Eastman's defense was Michael Gabelman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, who stated that the election was stolen. But during the trial, Gableman admitted that his 14-month investigation into the election failed to prove that fraud cost Trump the election.
Another Eastman witness, John Yu, his old friend and Berkeley law professor, testified that Joe Biden won the White House “fairly” and that Pence had “indefensible reasons” in refusing to reject the electoral votes.
One of the prominent witnesses at the bar was Pence's former lawyer, Gregory Jacob, who said Eastman called him to argue that Pence could unilaterally withdraw electoral votes in contested states where fraud was alleged to have occurred. Pence rejected the idea, and Jacob Eastman accused him of being a “snake in the ear of the President of the United States.”
Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University School of Law, remains licensed to practice law in Washington, D.C., and has been indicted, along with Trump and 17 others, in Fulton County, Georgia, in election-related schemes. Eastman vowed to fight these accusations. Four of his co-defendants – including attorneys Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell – pleaded guilty.
John Eastman, left, listens as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani speaks at a rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.
(Jacqueline Martin/Associated Press)
Eastman, a New Mexico resident, is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference case brought by private attorney Jack Smith. Eastman repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he appeared before the House committee on January 6, which recommended the Justice Department consider prosecuting him. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said Eastman “most likely” broke the law in connection with the 2020 election.
All along, Eastman's defense was that he was doing his duty as Trump's staunch legal defender, presenting his legal theories in good faith, with a personal belief in their merit. His defense attorneys argued that his public statements were protected by the First Amendment.
“If Dr. Eastman and his client are correct that the 2020 election was stolen — a view they strongly held at the time and continue to hold — then the threat to our system of government is extraordinarily high,” his lawyers wrote in his closing brief. .
The Bar Association asserted that Eastman's remarks at Ellipse Park, on stage with Giuliani, helped fuel the chaos that followed shortly after at the U.S. Capitol. Eastman argued that he was not advocating violence.
“The Bar has presented no circumstantial evidence, let alone direct evidence, that Dr. Eastman intended for any individual to witness or hear his statements and then commit acts of violence or lawlessness,” Eastman's lawyers said. “The plain text of Dr. Eastman's statements in the Ellipse shows that they were clearly not even remotely a call to violence or could even be generously construed as a call to violence.”
Eastman, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, served as dean of Chapman Law School from 2007 to 2010. He remained a professor there until 2021, when protests against his election-related activism forced him to resign.
According to his GiveSendGo page, Eastman has raised $636,602, with a goal of $750,000. In an interview with The Times, Eastman said he expects his legal bills — from the trial attorneys, the Georgia indictment and other election-related problems — to cost him $3 million to $3.5 million. He recently said he has no regrets.
“Not at all,” he said. “of course not.”
He said the trial was “extraordinary and unprecedented” but gave him an opportunity to present broader evidence of election fraud than had previously been broadcast. “It was surprising to a lot of people how much illegality we uncovered during that trial,” Eastman said.
Eastman portrays himself as a militant patriot who was subjected to “false narratives and slander.” He said he was a victim of “lawfare,” an attempt to silence unpopular opinions through legal mechanisms.
He said: “We are in a fairly important battle, and for whatever reason, I am the tip of the spear in that battle, and I am fighting it, as I believe my duty as a citizen requires.” “We will do whatever it takes.”
Despite his legal troubles, Eastman continued to speak publicly about the election. He recently received a standing ovation at a lunch meeting of the East Valley Republican Patriots at the Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage.
“More than 400 people attended,” he added. There was “overwhelming support and [a] “Warm applause.”
