Ex-Trump lawyer Eastman should lose state law license for efforts to overturn election, judge says
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has recommended that conservative attorney John Eastman lose his California law license over his efforts to keep former President Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election.
Eastman, a former law school dean, faces 11 disciplinary charges in the state bar court stemming from his development of a legal strategy to have then-Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
State Bar Court of California Judge Yvette Roland’s recommendation, issued Wednesday, now goes to the California Supreme Court for a final ruling on whether he should be disbarred. Eastman can appeal the top court’s decision.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall A. Miller, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the judge’s decision.
The California State Bar is a regulatory agency and the only court system in the U.S. that is dedicated to attorney discipline.
Eastman separately faces criminal charges in Georgia in the case accusing Trump and 18 allies of conspiring to overturn the Republican’s loss in the state. Eastman, who has pleaded not guilty, has argued he was merely doing his job as Trump’s attorney when he challenged the results of the 2020 election. He has denounced the case as targeting attorneys “for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients.”
He’s also one of the unnamed co-conspirators in the separate 2020 election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, but Eastman is not charged in the federal case.
The State Bar of California alleges that Eastman violated the state’s business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.” In doing so, the agency says he “violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy.”
Eastman was a close adviser to Trump in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He wrote a memo laying out a plan for Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes for Biden while presiding over the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 in order to keep Trump in the White House.
Prosecutors seeking to strip Eastman of his law license depicted him as a Trump enabler who fabricated a baseless theory and made false claims of fraud in hopes of overturning the results of the election.
Eastman’s attorney countered that his client never intended to steal the election but was considering ways to delay electoral vote counting so states could investigate allegations of voting improprieties. Trump’s claims of fraud were roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.
Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.
Eastman was dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California from 2007 to 2010 and was a professor at the school when he retired in 2021 after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.