John Eastman, once dean of the law school at Chapman University and adviser to former President Trump, should lose his law license for spreading a bogus legal strategy designed to overturn the 2020 election, the State Bar of California argued Tuesday .

The State Bar has charged Eastman with ethics violations for promoting false claims that electoral cheating cost Trump the election, even after the U.S. Attorney General dismissed claims of widespread fraud and dozens of courts sank fraud cases.

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President Biden’s election victory, according to the bar, pushed Eastman to state officials not to certify the election results and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to turn away voters in states Biden won.

The bar also accuses Eastman of fueling the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by telling thousands of Trump supporters on the National Mall that the election was stolen, including allegations that dead people voted.

All of his misconduct was done with a single goal of obstructing the Jan. 6 election count and preventing Vice President Pence from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the election, said Duncan Carling, an attorney representing the bar.

His comments came on the first day of Eastman’s trial in the California Bar Court, which will hear the case in Los Angeles for the next two weeks.

Carling said Eastman’s legal theory that Pence could reject certain states’ voters or delay counting votes was baseless, completely unsupported by historical precedent or law, and inconsistent with our values ​​as a nation .

It represented his last ditch effort in a long line of increasingly desperate attempts to overturn the election, Carling said. He said Eastman tried to drum up slates from alternate voters to stop the orderly transfer of power and pressured Pence to flout the law and overthrow every branch of government.

Carling said Eastman knew and admitted privately that his theory had no chance of prevailing in court, and that he was fully aware that his plan was hurting the nation even after the Jan. 6 violence.

Everything about Dr. Eastman’s behavior was fundamentally unfair and designed to hinder the lawful certification of the winner of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, Carling said. It violated the most important ethical obligations of lawyers, namely honesty and adherence to the rule of law.

Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, argued that his client could not be punished for putting forth a legal theory that was arguably tenable, and not so utterly flawed that a reasonable attorney would believe it. He said Eastman had just done his duty to vigorously advocate for his client, then-President Trump.

He said that two months before the November 2020 election, Eastman began working on an election integrity team created by Trump because of his decades of litigation and scientific experience.

He wasn’t there to steal the election or figure out ways to make President Trump the winner if he actually lost, Miller said. The focus was on ensuring that the elections were owned, legally conducted and certified, and that votes were counted correctly.

He said Eastman’s goal was to delay vote counting so that a reasonable investigation could be conducted into claims of election irregularities.

His goal was to ensure that the rightful winner of the election was properly certified, Miller said, adding that Eastman’s legal ideas were viable, tenable and in good faith.

Eastman remarks to Pence that his power to refuse to certify the voters was merely advocacy, Miller said, but the final decision rested with Pence, and Pence rejected Eastman’s theory.

There is no threat to democracy. All roads went through Vice President Pence, Miller said.

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h was nowhere near clearly a fair, good-faith debate that lawyers do.

The hearing continues on Wednesday. Eastman was the dean of Chapman’s law school from 2007 to 2010 and continued to teach there until 2021, when more than 100 faculty members and people associated with the school denounced his role in the January 6 events.