John Eastman, the former dean of the Orange County Law School who helped forge Donald Trump’s legal strategy to retain power after losing his 2020 presidential bid, must be disbarred, a State Bar judge ruled Court Wednesday.

Judge Yvette Roland’s recommendation to revoke the 63-year-old Eastman’s license to practice law in California will go to the state Supreme Court, which has the power to approve it.

At a marathon

process

that lasted continuously from June to November, the State Bar, the body that regulates lawyers, argued that Eastman was unfit to practice law because he made false claims that fraud cost Trump the election and because he had a bogus voter scheme promoted to block the elections. the electoral count.

Eastman stoked “predictable and destructive chaos when he stood next to fellow Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani on January 6, 2021, and told a huge crowd that the election had been fraudulent, the bar argued.

Eastman claimed he acted in good faith and as a strong advocate for his client. But lawyers for the bar argued that the evidence, including his often non-credible trial testimony, shows that he had and continues to have contempt for the truth and democracy, deliberately ignoring facts showing the validity of Biden’s victory in order to ​​promote a false narrative that would ignore the Constitution. , disenfranchises millions of voters and undermines a democratic election for the President of the United States in favor of his allegiance to Trump.

Instead of conducting fair research, Eastman deliberately parroted the misleading opinions and stories of demonstrably unqualified, unvetted and unreliable experts, attorneys argued.

When Eastman urged the Georgia Senate to undermine the popular vote for Biden and elect Trump electors, he alleged there was rampant fraud in the state, including evidence of illegal votes from as many as 2,500 incarcerated felons. The state would determine that only a maximum of 74 potential candidates had voted. The bar argued that Eastman was aware or willfully blind to the falsity of the numbers he handed out, relying on an affidavit from a CPA with no expertise in statistics or elections.

Eastman attempted to fabricate an illusion of legality in an illegal attempt to delay formal recognition of Trump’s clear defeat by any means necessary.

In the months after Biden won the presidency, courts have repeatedly dismissed Trump’s election challenges, the attorney general has dismissed election fraud, and Eastman’s own emails, as late as January 2, 2021, showed he was aware that hard documented evidence of the fraud, what was missing.

Still, Eastman’s memos, presented at the bar trial, outlined a strategy in which Vice President Mike Pence would block the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6 by refusing to count electoral votes in swing states.

Eastman knew his plan was illegal, the bar argued, as evidenced by his opposition in December. 2020 to file a federal lawsuit to test his theory of Pence’s power to reject voters. The risk of a court ruling that Pence does not have the authority to reject Biden’s certified ballots, he wrote, was very high. It was better for Pence to simply act courageously and be challenged, Eastman wrote.

Eastman promoted the lawless theory that Pence could turn away voters, the bar argued, in hopes of increasing the likelihood of more disaster. Eastman has not accepted an ounce of responsibility for his misconduct and has shown a complete lack of remorse, portraying himself as a victim of political persecution.

Eastman’s misconduct goes to the heart of what it means to be a lawyer. He has misused his license in a serious and harmful manner intended to undermine our democracy, according to the bar’s arguments.

During the trial, which took place in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, attorneys called election officials from disputed states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada to describe the steps they had taken to ensure a fair election. Eastman’s legal team tried to show that illegalities marred the fight, but at times his own witnesses seemed to undermine his case.

Testifying in Eastman’s defense was Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who has testified that the election was stolen. But during the trial, Gableman admitted that his own 14-month investigation into the election failed to prove that fraud cost Trump the election.

Another Eastman witness, John Yoo, his longtime friend and law professor at Berkeley, testified that Joe Biden had won the White House fair and square and that Pence had impeachable reasons for refusing to reject electoral votes.

One of the bar’s star witnesses was Mike Pence’s former lawyer Gregory Jacob, who said Eastman approached him to argue that Pence could unilaterally throw out electoral votes in disputed states where fraud was alleged. Pence dismissed the idea and Jacob accused Eastman of being “a snake in the ear of the President of the United States.”

Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University’s law school, is still licensed to practice law in Washington, D.C. He has been indicted, along with Trump and 17 others, in Fulton County, Georgia, on election-related schemes. Eastman has vowed to fight the charges. Four of his co-defendants

including attorneys Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell have pleaded guilty.

Eastman, a resident of New Mexico, is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Eastman repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he appeared before a House committee on Jan. 6, which recommended that the Justice Department consider prosecuting him. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled that Eastman “more likely than not” broke the law in connection with the 2020 election.

Eastman’s defense has always been that he was fulfilling his duty as a vigorous legal advocate for Trump, advancing his legal theories in good faith, with a subjective belief in their merits. His lawyers argued that his public statements were protected by the First Amendment.

If Dr. Eastman and his client were right that the 2020 election was stolen, a position they firmly held at the time and continue to do so today. Then the threat to our system of government is extremely high, his lawyers wrote in his final letter.

The bar alleged that Eastman’s comments at the Ellipse, on stage with Giuliani, helped fuel the chaos that followed soon after at the Capitol. Eastman argued that he was not calling for violence.

“The State Bar has presented no circumstantial evidence, let alone direct evidence, that Dr. Eastman intended that any individual would see or hear his statements and then commit acts of violence or lawlessness, Eastman’s attorneys argued. The plain text of Dr.’s statements Eastman on the Ellipse shows that they were clearly not even remotely a call to violence, or could even be generously interpreted as a call to violence.

Eastman, a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, served as dean of Chapman’s law school from 2007 to 2010. He remained a professor there until 2021, when an outrage over his election relations activities forced him to leave.

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 bar lawsuit to the Georgia indictment and other election-related issues to cost him $3 million to $3.5 million. He recently said he had no regrets.

Absolutely not, he said. Absolutely not.

He said the trial was extraordinary and unprecedented, but gave him the opportunity to present further evidence of election fraud than had previously been aired. It was an eye-opener for a lot of people about the amount of illegality we uncovered during that process, Eastman said.

Eastman portrays himself as a fighting patriot who is the victim of false stories and slander. He said he is a victim of legal practices, an attempt to silence unpopular views through legal means.

We are in a fairly important battle and for whatever reason I am the leading point of the spear in that battle, and I am taking up that battle as I believe my duty as a citizen requires, he said. Well, do whatever it takes.

Despite his legal troubles, Eastman has continued to speak publicly about the election. He was recently warmly welcomed at a lunch meeting of the East Valley Republican Women Patriots at the Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage.

More than 400 people showed up, he said. There was overwhelming support and (a) standing ovation.