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More than three years after the Jan. 6 attack and Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, a great many rioters have been held accountable for their assault on the Capitol. Far fewer officials in positions of influence, however, have faced meaningful consequences for their roles in orchestrating the anti-election plot.
With this in mind, the recent proceedings against John Eastman have been of great interest, and as NPR reported, the Republican lawyer is now being held accountable in important ways.
A California judge has formally recommended that attorney John Eastman lose his law license for his role in Donald Trump’s legal effort to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election. Eastman, a prominent figure in conservative legal circles and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, played a key role in developing and backing a plan for states to send pro-Trump slates of electors to Congress and have then-Vice President Mike Pence unilaterally block or delay the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
“Eastman’s wrongdoing constitutes exceptionally serious ethical violations warranting severe professional discipline,” wrote California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland in her decision. “Eastman made multiple patently false and misleading statements in court filings, in public remarks heard by countless Americans and to others regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election and Vice President Pence’s authority to refuse to count or delay counting properly certified slates of electoral votes on January 6, 2021.”
I’m mindful of the fact that Trump world is filled with assorted figures, and there may be some readers asking right now, “Wait, which one is John Eastman?” So let’s revisit our recent coverage and review why he’s significant.
In theory, we should barely be aware of the Republican lawyer’s existence. After all, before joining Team Trump — the then-president saw him on Fox News and was impressed — Eastman was a rather obscure figure.
Even after Trump’s defeat, Eastman, at least on paper, shouldn’t have been especially relevant. He didn’t work in the White House counsel’s office. He wasn’t the attorney general. He had no office in the Justice Department. Eastman was, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently described him on the air, a well-credentialed crank.
But the radical lawyer had one important thing going for him: In late 2020, the sitting president of the United States was eager to buy what Eastman was selling, and everyone around Trump quickly realized that the attorney’s views represented their boss’ views.
As a matter of law and politics, the lawyer may have been a fringe operator, better suited for a role on a far-right, C-list podcast than a seat in the Oval Office, but in the aftermath of Election Day 2020, Trump didn’t much care.
Why not? Because as the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation helped prove, Eastman helped concoct an illegal scheme that the then-president saw as an avenue to keeping power he hadn’t legitimately earned.
Eastman was not, however, merely a behind-the-scenes author of a ridiculous memo. The Republican lawyer also effectively played the role of a lobbyist, advocating on behalf of a plot, pleading with officials to go along with the plot, and even appearing at a pre-riot Jan. 6 rally to espouse his outlandish ideas to Trump’s radicalized followers.
As part of these efforts, Eastman also delivered remote testimony to a Georgia state Senate panel on Dec. 3, 2020, and peddled a variety of demonstrably false claims about the election results. The lawyer even told state lawmakers at the time that “the election can’t be validly certified.”
He was ultimately indicted for such efforts by the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.
As for the developments in California, the process has lasted nearly a year, leading to yesterday’s “preliminary finding” that Eastman did, in fact, breach professional ethics.
A Washington Post report added, “State Bar Court of California Judge Yvette Roland issued the recommendation in a 128-page ruling on Wednesday, ordering that Eastman’s law license be put on ‘involuntary inactive’ status effective three days after her ruling. The California Supreme Court will issue a final ruling on the matter, which Eastman can appeal. Along with the recommendation for disbarment, Roland recommended that Eastman be ordered to pay $10,000 in monetary sanctions to the State Bar of California Client Security Fund.”
Meanwhile, while all of this unfolds, Jeffrey Clark, the indicted environmental lawyer whom Trump wanted to take over the Justice Department after his 2020 defeat, repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment rights during his own disbarment hearing yesterday.
A CNN report added that unfolding developments for the Trump-aligned lawyers “highlight how, even years after the 2020 election, authorities that regulate the attorneys are still looking closely at the actions of attorneys for Trump, several of whom could lose their law licenses.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.