A California judge on Wednesday recommended disbarring a lawyer at the heart of former President Trump’s legal challenges of the 2020 election results.
State Bar Judge Yvette Roland found John Eastman guilty on ten of the eleven charges brought by the California State Bar last year.
The state bar moved to revoke Eastman’s license to practice law in the state for making “false and misleading statements” about purported election fraud and his alleged role in “provoking” the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“In view of the circumstances surrounding Eastman’s misconduct and balancing the aggravation and mitigation, the court recommends that Eastman be disbarred,” Roland wrote in a 128-page decision.
California Judge Finds Trum… by Kyle Becker
The court also suggested that Eastman pay $10,000 in monetary fines to the State Bar of California’s Client Security Fund.
Eastman’s legal team indicated he will appeal Wednesday’s decision, and the matter will eventually go to the California Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the court ordered Eastman’s transfer to inactive status, which means he would be unable to practice law.
Roland’s decision comes after a more than 30-day trial last year, during which Eastman himself testified. The court declared Eastman preliminary liable just before the trials completed in November. Toni Atkins, a Democrat and the Speaker of the California State Assembly at the time, appointed Roland.
Eastman directed the legal approach aimed at undermining election outcomes in many crucial 2020 states, including the use of substitute elector slates to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. The strategy also depended on former Vice President Mike Pence replacing legitimate electors with “fake” ones, with Eastman penning documents that fueled the pressure campaign against Pence.
Roland said in her conclusion that Eastman was hesitant to confess to “any ethical lapses” in his actions.
“This lack of remorse and accountability presents a significant risk that Eastman may engage in further unethical conduct, compounding the threat to the public,” the judge wrote.
Though Roland’s decision represents a huge legal loss for Eastman, she did agree with him on one of his eleven points.
The state bar charged Eastman with moral turpitude for his Ellipse speech on January 6, linking it to the violence later that day, but the court dropped the charge, noting that the bar “presented no evidence to show that Eastman’s statements contributed to the assault on the Capitol.”
In court documents, Eastman’s attorneys called the disbarment proceedings as “Orwellian,” claiming he was exercising his ethical obligation to vigorously advocate Trump’s interests and had a First Amendment right to make public remarks at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and elsewhere.
“The premise of the State Bar’s charge against Dr. Eastman, which rests on these and other similar statements, has an Orwellian cast to it: the government has spoken, and if you disagree, then you must be lying. Two plus two equals five, after all, and if the government says so, you must not only repeat the lie, but you must come to believe it as well. This is authoritarianism, not republicanism,” Eastman’s statement said.
“Allegations of illegal conduct and fraud in elections have become a staple of our political contests for decades, including 2000 and 2016, but only in the wake of the 2020 election has any attempt been made to criminalize or to subject to bar disciplinary process the lawyers who made such allegations. What we are witnessing is an unprecedented use — and abuse — of the legal system to silence the views of political opponents,” the statement continued.
“Dr. Eastman maintains that his handling of the legal issues he was asked to assess after the November 2020 election was based on reliable legal precedent, prior presidential elections, research of constitutional text, and extensive scholarly material,” Eastman’s legal team added about the ruling.
“The process undertaken by Dr. Eastman in 2020 is the same process taken by lawyers every day and everywhere – indeed, that is the essence of what lawyers do,” it continued.
The state bar claimed that Eastman was creating “an illusion of legality to an illegal effort,” and demanded that he be disbarred.
“Every California attorney has the duty to uphold the constitution and the rule of law,” Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement.
“Mr. Eastman regularly disregarded his responsibility. Worse, he did it in a manner that jeopardized the core values of our democracy,” Cardona said.
Eastman is also facing criminal charges with Trump in Georgia, where they and more than a dozen other Trump supporters are accused of trying to alter the state’s 2020 election results. Eastman has pled ‘not guilty’ to all eight allegations.
Several other attorneys associated with Trump’s 2020 campaign have also faced criminal charges for arguing that election fraud took place in the 2020 election.
Trump team lawyers and state attorney generals also attempted to litigate unconstitutional efforts in swing states that gave the Democratic Party advantages, such as the implementation of ‘no excuse’ mail-in voting, which was carried out in a number of states without authorization from the state legislatures.
The Supreme Court declined to take up the case for lack of standing, despite the states possessing original jurisdiction to bring such cases.
A 2020 report found that, “Among OECD countries besides the United States… 78% of the countries either do not allow mail-in ballots ‘for people living in the country’ or require a photo ID to get a mail-in ballot. In the EU, 85% of countries either bar mail-in ballots for people not living abroad or require a photo ID for such a ballot, according to the report. And every European country that is not a member of the EU has mail-in policies that fall into that category.”
The Democratic Party legally challenged presidential election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016. No one was criminally charged for seeking to “overturn” the election results.
Ballot Box (gone), Jury Box (gone), Cartridge Box.
Now you know why they are trying so hard to get rid of the second