Judge says Eastman should lose law license
A judge in California on Wednesday recommended that lawyer John Eastman be stripped of his law license, finding he had violated rules of professional ethics by persistently lying in his efforts to help former President Donald Trump maintain his grip on power after losing the 2020 election.
In a 128-page ruling, the judge, Yvette Roland, said Eastman willfully misrepresented facts in lawsuits he helped file challenging the election results and acted dishonestly in promoting a “wild theory” that Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, could unilaterally declare Trump the victor during a certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“In sum, Eastman exhibited gross negligence by making false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon,” Roland found, adding that he had breached “his ethical duty as an attorney to prioritize honesty and integrity.”
The ruling said Eastman would lose his license within three days of the decision being issued. Although he can appeal the finding, the ruling makes his license inactive, meaning he cannot practice law in California while a review is taking place.
Eastman was a visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy at the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado at the time of the Capitol riot.
The decision was only the latest effort by bar officials across the country to seek accountability against lawyers who pushed false claims of election fraud and sought to help Trump stay in office.
“This is a big deal,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of the States United Democracy Center, which filed the initial bar complaint against Eastman. “In the fight to protect democracy and the rule of law, consequences are imperative.”
Randall Miller, a lawyer for Eastman, said in a statement Wednesday that was confident an appeals court “will swiftly provide a remedy” to the disbarment ruling.
“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,” Miller said.
Eastman, a constitutional law scholar who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was one of the architects of a brazen legal scheme to create fake slates of pro-trump electors in states that actually were won by President Joe Biden.
He also promoted the plan to pressure Pence to use the fake elector slates to throw the election to Trump during the proceeding.
In recommending Eastman lose his license, Roland accused him of “moral turpitude” for his “dubious strategy to influence Vice President Pence to take unilateral action” to hand the election to
Trump on Jan. 6.
“No law or provision in the Constitution confers on the vice president the power to reject electoral votes or delay the counting of votes,” the judge wrote. “Eastman knew this.”
Because of his role in the election interference schemes, Eastman was identified — albeit not by name — as Co-conspirator 2 in a federal indictment filed in Washington last summer charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election. The indictment describes Co-conspirator 2, who was not charged in the case, as a lawyer who came up with and sought to carry out a plan to “leverage” Pence’s “ceremonial role” at the proceeding on Jan. 6 to “obstruct the certification of the presidential election.”
Eastman is facing charges in a separate state case in Georgia where he has been named with Trump in a sprawling racketeering indictment. That indictment has accused Eastman of taking part in a plot to tamper with the results of the election in Georgia.
The disciplinary case against Eastman was opened with the State Bar of California in Los Angeles in January 2023.
After an expansive, multiweek hearing that delved into his promotion of baseless claims of election fraud and his promulgation of fringe legal theories about the vice president’s supposed authority to single-handedly choose the winner of a presidential election, the bar officials returned a preliminary finding in November that he had breached his professional ethics.