A California judge recommended disbarring a lawyer at the center of former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Wednesday.
State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland found John Eastman culpable on 10 of the 11 counts filed by the California State Bar last year. The state bar sought to strip Eastman’s license to practice law in the state over “false and misleading statements” about purported election fraud and his role in “provoking” the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“It is recommended that John Charles Eastman, State Bar Number 193726, be disbarred from the practice of law in California and that his name be stricken from the roll of attorneys,” Roland wrote.
Eastman can appeal Wednesday’s ruling, and the case could ultimately end up before the California Supreme Court.
Roland’s ruling follows a trial last year that lasted more than 30 days, at which Eastman himself testified. Just before the proceedings concluded in November, the judge found Eastman preliminarily culpable. Roland was appointed by Tony Atkins, a Democrat who at the time was Speaker of the California State Assembly.
Eastman spearheaded the legal strategy attempting to subvert the election results in several key 2020 states, including by using slates of alternate electors to swing the election’s outcome in Trump’s favor. The plan also relied on former Vice President Mike Pence throwing out the real electors for the “fake” ones, with Eastman writing memos that spurred the pressure campaign on Pence.
Eastman described the disbarment proceedings as “Orwellian,” insisting he was fulfilling his ethical duty to zealously represent Trump’s interests and that had a First Amendment right to make his public statements at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and elsewhere.
“This is authoritarianism, not republicanism,” Eastman’s lawyers wrote in court papers following the trial.
“And Dr. Eastman, in fulfilling his duties to a client, happens to have been thrust to the forefront of the push-back against such authoritarianism, at great expense both in time and treasure to himself,” they continued. “If Dr. Eastman and his client were correct that the 2020 election was stolen – a view they firmly held at the time and continue to hold – then the threat to our system of government is extraordinarily high.”
The state bar insisted that Eastman was fabricating “an illusion of legality to an illegal effort,” demanding he be disbarred.
“His misconduct, committed in the course and scope of his representation of former President Trump, shocked the conscience of the nation, and is of such exceptional gravity that only disbarment will suffice. To protect both the public and the integrity of our legal system, disbarment is compelled,” they wrote in court filings.
Eastman also faces criminal charges alongside Trump in Georgia, where they and more than a dozen other Trump allies are accused of attempting to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Eastman has pleaded not guilty to the eight counts he faces.
Several other lawyers connected to Trump’s 2020 campaign have also faced repercussions for their false claims of election fraud and efforts to swing the election in the former president’s favor.
Longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani had his New York law license suspended in 2021, and a D.C. bar association disciplinary panel said in June his license there should be revoked. Ex-Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis was publicly censured in Colorado for her false statements tied to the election, and lawyer Lin Wood retired after the State Bar of Georgia said it would not pursue disciplinary proceedings against him should he do so.
A disciplinary trial for lawyer Jeffrey Clark, an ex-Justice Department official who helped Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, is also underway. The D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility is attempting to strip his law license for using “the authority of the Department of Justice to overturn the election, based on a lie.”
Eastman also holds a law license in Washington, D.C.
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