DL Truth: Distance Learning Truth

Quote:Justice for John Eastman
The fundamental message implicit in the California Bar's vendetta against Trump's former lawyer is this: "We're the government. We've defined what is truth. How dare you question us."

By Roger Kimball
January 28, 2023

The January 6 Committee may have shut up shop, Liz Cheney may have scuttled back to her constituency in Georgetown and at CNN, but the great Democratic vendetta machine is still fired up and pounding along, looking for people to smash and livelihoods to destroy.

Those who dared to walk around the Capitol that fateful day are still being apprehended and jailed. Many face multi-year prison sentences for such misdemeanor torts as "parading" or "obstructing an official proceeding." Anyone associated with Donald Trump is fair game, as the names Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and Jeffrey Clark remind us.

At the top of that hit list is John Eastman, the distinguished constitutional scholar who made the unforgivable error of offering legal advice to President Trump in the turbulent aftermath of the 2020 election.

I have written about Eastman before, both in this space and elsewhere. He has had his life turned upside down. He was shuffled out of his position as dean of the Chapman Law School and has been treated as a pariah by colleagues in his profession. Anti-Trump protestors regularly congregate at the foot of his driveway--fortunately, a long one--to vilify him and his association with the Bad Orange Man.

Now the State Bar of California has announced that it has filed an official complaint of 11 charges against Eastman, alleging that he endeavored to "plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states."

Not a single one of those charges is true. Wikipedia and other left-wing megaphones keep repeating the canard that Trump and his advisors attempted to "overturn" the results of the 2020 election. No, they didn't. As Eastman explains in meticulous detail in his response to the California Bar's attack, what he did was review the election law in order to advise Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on the various legitimate strategies they could employ to address the rampant irregularities that had infected the 2020 election.

In other words, he did what lawyers in our adversarial legal system are supposed to do. He looked at the law and advised his client on what courses of action he could legally take in order to achieve his ends. Had he done otherwise, he would have betrayed the interests of his client.

Remember, Eastman was not operating in a void. The attorneys general of several states had raised serious questions about the integrity of an election in which COVID was used as cover to change voting rules by executive fiat rather than, as the 12th Amendment to the Constitution stipulates, through the legislative processes of the individual states. Those governors and secretaries of state who bypassed their legislatures to change their election laws acted illegally.

Eastman sketched several possible legal courses of action in response. The suggestion that got the most attention concerned a possible course of action for Mike Pence. As vice president, Pence was charged by the Constitution with opening ballots from the electors in order that they be counted. But since several states had questions about the integrity of those ballots, Eastman suggested that Pence propose a brief pause in the counting while the problematic states could be canvassed.

This the State Bar of California regards as something little short of treason. Eastman, the bar's notice of disciplinary charges alleges, "violated this duty [to the Constitution] in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land--an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy--for which he must be held accountable."

Note the rhetoric: "usurp the will of the American people," forsooth! "An egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy," etc., etc. Give me a break. What Eastman actually did was act responsibly for his client by researching the law and recommending certain courses of action. But the California Bar, staffed and overseen almost exclusively by Democrats, dismisses all that. They are out for blood and are seeking to have Eastman disbarred.

It is yet another outrage from the people who brought us the January 6 Kangaroo Court. On Friday, Eastman was joined at a Zoom press conference by a long list of legal eminences, including former Attorney General Edwin Meese, John Yoo, and Janice Rogers Brown. All testified to Eastman's competence and integrity and noted the dangerous precedent that the California Bar's action represented.

As Margot Cleveland wrote at The Federalist, the California Bar has essentially weaponized its disciplinary process along ideological or political grounds. If the reasoning behind the California Bar were to prevail, Cleveland observed, then Senator Ted Cruz and the attorneys general from 18 states should all be disbarred.

As Eastman noted in his remarks Friday, the fundamental message implicit in the California Bar?s vendetta against him is this: "We're the government. We've defined what is truth. How dare you question us."

Eastman closed by emphasizing what should be obvious but which is often forgotten. "The stakes here are far greater than whether an individual lawyer will lose or retain his bar license," he said.

Quote:We are approaching an authoritarian, even totalitarian, mentality where citizens are not allowed to voice their criticism of government; where their views are censored through an unholy alliance between a social media oligopoly and the government itself. COVID response--woe to the doctors who dared to raise red flags. CRT in schools--woe to the parents who object. Election lawyers--woe to the lot of us for seeking and speaking the truth.

In the hurly-burly of everyday life, there are always scandals and emergencies and crises. Most are ephemeral, soon swallowed up by the ceaseless river of events. But some turn out to be critical turning points that determine the shape of the regime we inhabit. We are at such an inflection point now, I believe, and the case of John Eastman is a gravamen in the great decision that is facing us regarding the future of individual liberty, the fate of our constitutional republic, and the level of intrusiveness and control we are willing to cede to the bureaucrats who would rule us.

They say that in the modern bureaucratic state, "the process is the punishment." The state-sponsored, media-abetted attack against John Eastman, in which his very livelihood and personal security are threatened, shows that the process is only part of the envisaged punishment.

Still, the process proceeds and is very expensive. Eastman has up a legal defense here. I urge you to contribute. I have.

John Eastman's State Bar trial has begun and it's showing all the signs of a rigged game, although that hardly comes as a surprise. Now more than ever he needs our support.

Quote:State Bar of California Begins Trial to Disbar Trump's Attorney John Eastman Over 2020 Election
June 21, 2023 Rachel Alexander

LOS ANGELES, California -- The State Bar of California (SBC) began a trial on Tuesday seeking to disbar conservative legal scholar John Eastman over his role advising former President Donald Trump and state legislatures on challenging the 2020 election results. The proceedings arose out of a complaint against him made by the States United Democracy Center (SUDC). SUDC is run by a former Obama appointee, Norm Eisen, and its advisory board includes former Arizona governor and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The SBC charged Eastman with 11 ethics violations in January. Eastman filed a 100-page response containing thousands of attachments, and published a rebuttal on his Substack account. He said the SBC's complaint "is filled with distortions, half truths, and outright falsehoods."

Bar disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland began the proceedings handling various pretrial motions, followed by opening statements and the first witness, Eastman. Roland refused to allow several of Eastman's witnesses to testify, including former appellate court judge Janice Rogers Brown. She refused to allow Joseph Fried, an auditor who wrote the book Debunked: An Auditor Reviews the 2020 Election -- and the Lessons Learned, saying he had no expertise in the area. Jay Valentine, who built eBay's fraud protection engine, was also rejected by Roland.

In his opening statement, SBC counsel Duncan Carling accused the Claremont Institute director of trying to stop the certification of the election, including by providing advice to Trump after the election stating that Vice President Mike Pence could reject electoral votes from states suspected of election fraud. Carling said the advice "was baseless, completely unsupported by historic precedent or law and contrary to our values as a nation." While Eastman admitted he gave that advice, he also gave Trump other options he could take, such as accepting the votes.

Next, Randy Miller gave an opening statement for the defense. He said the issue comes down to "tenability," "advocacy," "protected speech," and "the right to petition." He asserted that it is a legal debate whether the vice president has the authority to reject the electoral votes.

Carling repeatedly tried to get Eastman to admit he believed there was election fraud in the 2020 election, bringing up his past statements, and Eastman did not deny nor backtrack from his statements. Eastman made statements like, "We had an unconstitutional election."

In contrast, when Trump attorney Jenna Ellis was investigated by the State Bar of Colorado for statements she'd made about the election being stolen, she entered into an agreement with that bar where she admitted she had made "misrepresentations."

Eastman testified that he was concerned officials may have been deliberately taking action to benefit the Biden campaign due to what he saw in Pennsylvania. He said Pennsylvania election officials illegally started an effort to cure ballots during the canvassing of mail-in ballots, and appeared to notify Democrats about it in advance since the Democrats started advertising for workers to do the curing before the curing plan was announced to the public and Republican election officials.

Carling showed the court a video clip of Eastman advising state legislators in states suspected of election fraud that they should decertify the election results, but it did not include the first part of his statement. Eastman told the court that it was taken out of context, since he had previously told the legislators they had various options. His attorney objected to admitting just that portion of the video, but Roland overruled him and allowed it in.

Judge Roland jumped in and rephrased Carling's questions several times, making them more penetrating. Once when Carling appeared not to remember what question he'd asked, she repeated it for him. She admonished Eastman and Miller multiple times for minor issues, and did not admonish the SBC counsel for anything. She told Miller to stop interrupting her, and criticized Eastman for not answering the questions accurately.

One observer watching the trial tweeted, "A new attorney was added to the Bar team against John Eastman. Never mind, it's just the judge!"

Carling frequently asked Eastman about previous remarks he'd made but did not describe them accurately. Eastman responded and corrected him, explaining that Carling was distorting his words. Carling's distortions made Eastman's advice look more radical. The judge did not call Carling out for the exaggerations.

Roland lectured him when he claimed attorney-client privilege, declining to answer one of Carling's questions asking who one of his clients was. She said Eastman could reveal who a client is, since merely naming the client doesn't violate attorney-client privilege. Eastman retorted that if he revealed which clients he told could choose other electors, that would reveal privileged communication he gave a client. Roland responded and said she would resume assessing the issue on Wednesday.

Carling questioned Eastman extensively regarding Eastman's concern that loosening signature verification standards resulted in many more early ballots being accepted. Carling implied that his concern was invalid. He also asked him if he agreed with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that only 74 felons voted in the 2020 election. Eastman instead stuck by his previous statements that as many as 2,500 felons may have voted in the state's 2020 election, citing the work of election investigator Bryan Geels. Carling tried to characterize Eastman's previous remarks as indicating he was sure there were 2,500, but Eastman called him out on it and clarified that he's said "as many as" as well as the fact he had not had a chance himself to thoroughly look into it.

Carling focused heavily on the fact that Eastman cited the work of election investigator Bryan Geels, who initially said that around 66,000 underage people registered to vote in Georgia, but later admitted he made a mistake in calculating it and corrected it to just over 2,000 underage voters. Eastman shot back that Raffensperger mischaracterized the description in the media by claiming that Geels was referring to underage people who had voted, instead of merely registered to vote.

A lawyer who preferred not to be identified due to fear of retaliation told The Arizona Sun Times that he believes the reason the SBC is going after Eastman so hard is because it has been under criticism for ignoring misbehavior by well-connected attorneys. He said one of them had received over 200 bar complaints but no action was taken against him.

The trial is scheduled to run for two weeks, but it could end earlier. It is being live streamed. If Eastman loses, he can appeal all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. He has a legal defense fund seeking $500,000 which is at $385,048.

Quote:Legal Defense Fund



John Eastman served as President Trump's lawyer on several legal challenges arising out of the 2020 election, including President Trump's Motion to Intervene in the U.S. Supreme Court in Texas v. Pennsylvania et al., and Trump's own Petition in Trump v. Boockvar asking the Supreme Court to review three unconstitutional Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions. Dr. Eastman also advised the President about constitutional ways to prevent illegal conduct of the election from determining the results, and he spoke before the President at the Save America rally on January 6.

For his efforts to ensure a free and fair election, he was "retired" from his tenured faculty position at Chapman University's law school, where he had previously served as Dean, and had his classes and speaking responsibilities cancelled at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he was serving as the Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy. He has been targeted by hard core leftist activists who have filed a bar complaint against him, seeking to have him disbarred and thereby lose his source of income. He has also been subpoenaed by the hyper-partisan January 6 Committee in the House of Representatives, which is targeting anyone involved in election integrity efforts as well as those engaged in freedom of speech and association to voice their objections to illegality in the conduct of the election. Responding to both of these attacks has required Dr. Eastman to hire outside counsel, at significant cost to himself.

We, as Americans, need to push back against illegal conduct in elections. Elections are the way we give our "consent" to government, and if they are not free and fair, We the People are no longer sovereign and we no longer have a government that derives its "just powers from the consent of the governed," as the Declaration of Independence promises. The stakes for freedom are high, and Dr. Eastman asks for your support. The funds raised will be used to pay for his legal team (responding to January 6 Committee and bar complaints, as well as bringing suits for violations of constitutional rights).


Important Links:

Ken Masugi, John Eastman, The Man Who Deserved To Win, American Greatness (Dec. 13, 2020)

John C. Eastman, Setting the Record Straight on the POTUS Ask, American Mind (Jan. 18, 2021)

John C. Eastman, Trying to Prevent Illegal Conduct From Deciding an Election Is Not Endorsing a 'Coup' American Greatness (Sept. 30, 2021)

Roger Kimball, Claremont Under Fire, American Greatness (Oct. 2, 2021)

James V. DeLong, Standing With John Eastman, American Thinker (Oct. 12, 2021)

John C. Eastman, Constitutional Statesmanship, Claremont Review of Books (Fall 2021)

Raheem J. Kassam, John Eastman's Lawyers Just Destroyed the Jan 6 Committee and Its 'Subpoenas', TheNationalPulse.com (Dec. 2, 2021)

Roger Kimball, John Eastman is right to resist the January 6 committee, The Spectator World (Dec. 2, 2021)

Mark Levin, Interview with John Eastman (Starts at 50:20), IHeart Radio (Dec. 2, 2021)

Steve Bannon, Interview with John Eastman (Starts at 31:15), Warroom.org (Dec. 2, 2021).

Tucker Carlson, Interview with John Eastman, Fox News (Dec. 6, 2021)

Rob Natelson,The Left?s Attack on Attorney-Client Confidentiality: The Case of Trump Adviser John Eastman, Epoch Times (Mar 19, 2022)

Jeffrey Clark, "Project 65" Seeks to Kill All the Trump Lawyers -- By Canceling Them: The Progressive Left's Latest Move to Destroy America, Revolver (Mar 29, 2022)

Robert Hutchinson, Federal Judge's Opinion on Trump Reveals Judiciary's Reliance on Media Propaganda, American Thinker (March 31, 2022)

Claes Ryn, Memorandum: How the 2020 Election Could Have Been Stolen, The American Conservative (Jan. 5, 2021)

Rachel Alexander, The Left Dominates the Legal System, and They're Taking Down GOP Election Attorneys En Masse, Townhall (May 30, 2022)

Mark Pulliam, The Legal Profession Brooks No Dissent, American Greatness (June 4, 2022)

Opening Brief in Eastman v. Thompson

Reply Brief in Eastman v. Thompson

John C. Eastman, Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal (June 22, 2022).

George Rasley, We Need More Lawyers Like Prof. John Eastman, Conservative HQ (June 24, 2022)

Tucker Carlson, Interview with John Eastman, Fox News (June 27, 2022)

Victor Davis Hanson, Who Are The Real Insurrectionists?, American Greatness (July 3, 2022)

John Eastman, Response to The 65 Project's SCOTUS Bar Complaint, Substack (Aug. 3, 2022)

Christopher Flannery, John Eastman is an American Hero, American Greatness (Aug. 4, 2022)

William B. Allen, John Eastman is John Eastman's Best Defense, American Greatness (Aug. 31, 2022)

Conrad Black, American Democracy Is in Extremis, Epoch Times (Oct. 3, 2022)

Rob Natelson, Joe Biden's Charge of 'Semi-Fascism', American Greatness (Oct. 6, 2022)

John Ransom, January 6 Committee Harassing Targets, Engaging in 'Fishing Expedition': Lawyers, Epoch Times (Oct. 11, 2022)

Margot Cleveland, California Would Disbar Ted Cruz and 18 Attorneys General If It Could, The Federalist (Jan. 27, 2023)

Roger Kimball, Justice for John Eastman, American Greatness (Jan. 28, 2023)

Rachel Alexander, California Bar Seeks to Disbar Trump Attorney John Eastman for Nothing, Townhall (Jan. 30, 2023)

BTW, don't be fooled by that bleached out high school yearbook photo her past employer posted.



State Bar court judge Yvette Roland is a past president of the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles.



Does John Eastman have the complexion to make the connection and get the affection? Or will he be making reparations for generations of degradation and subordination?

(06-23-2023, 07:49 AM)Armando Ramos Wrote: [ -> ]BTW, don't be fooled by that bleached out high school yearbook photo her past employer posted.

Hasn't she heard? Passing is passé. But then a willingness to sell out your heritage for personal gain seems to be the hallmark of any judicial officer.

Quote:Nearly forty years ago historian Nathan I. Huggins predicted the decline of passing in his short essay "Passing is Passé" when he succinctly opined that improved conditions fought for and won by blacks meant that the "insistence on race identity, race consciousness, race pride, and race beauty has made anachronistic the game of hide-and-seek, traditionally played by whites and blacks in America."
https://www.blackpast.org/african-americ...relevance/

(06-23-2023, 07:49 AM)Armando Ramos Wrote: [ -> ]State Bar court judge Yvette Roland is a past president of the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles.

The relaxer companies must have made a fortune on that room. Looks like a Martha & the Vandellas impersonators convention.

Quote:November 9, 2023
John Eastman’s bar trial exposes Democrats’ process-rigging ignominy
By Mark J. Fitzgibbons


The California Bar, seemingly acting as a surrogate for the Democrat Party and other Trump Derangement Syndrome forces, will regret tangling with Professor John Eastman. The constitutional scholar and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas was on trial since June until last week before a State Bar Court for his role in advising President Trump about the duties of the Vice President in counting electors on the now-infamous January 6, 2021.

The kangaroo court trial before Judge Yvette D. Roland was a disgraceful example of partisan misinformation masquerading as legal ethics. The Bar botched things so badly, however, that Democrat fixer, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley, was called upon to smear Eastman in a 60 Minute segment that aired this past Sunday night after the trial had concluded.

The highly respected former law school dean Eastman faces potential disbarment for providing his client options about decisions under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution for the President of the Senate (i.e., then-Vice President Mike Pence) under the clause, “open all the [state Elector] certificates and the votes shall then be counted.” That application of that clause was a central constitutional issue for the fateful J6.

Throughout the trial Judge Roland showed her somewhat blasé but frequently blatant bias in her decisions about allowing evidence in for the California Bar and excluding evidence from Eastman’s lawyers.

She got the memo. She clearly understood her party’s expectations that her role was not to mete out justice, but to be an elections “hanging judge” against Eastman. Democrats like their rigging, and Eastman is all-but-assured to lose at this State Bar trial level.

The trial was live-streamed, but Judge Roland forbade its being recorded, which of course will help hide how Eastman not only proved his innocence in this Bar matter, but actually ended up showing how wrong the 2020 election-rigging deniers have been.

The fact that Judge Roland allowed proceedings to continue for so long after it was clear early on that Eastman was innocent merely shows how corrupt the purposes of this trial were. Pelley’s dishonest 60 Minutes segment was fake news cover from the MSM in case it leaked out to the public that the trial was a sham.

The best memorialized coverage of the trial was provided by Rachel Alexander through her live tweeting on X (@Rach_IC) and her excellent summary articles at @ArizonaSunTimes. Her review of the 60 Minutes segment not only shreds the pompous Pelley’s credibility on Eastman’s case, but provides a superb yet brief analysis of the superior evidence and expert testimony put on by Eastman and his lawyers. Especially for those who’ve not followed the trial, it’s a terrific summary.

Eastman did what lawyers are not merely trained to do, but are expected to do. He took a difficult issue in an area of unsettled law and objectively raised the prevailing arguments supporting his client. Rachel’s most recent article shows that clearly.

That’s how landmark caselaw is achieved. The Democrat Party was, once upon a time, a proponent of this process of protecting arguments about unsettled constitutional law. Now, to their shame, they are rigging multiple systems and processes of justice and democracy all in the name of grabbing and holding power.

The California Bar trial will backfire against those doing the rigging. What John Eastman did during his trial is provide a roadmap for exposing the 2020 election rigging and illegalities. His use of facts, experts, and his superior knowledge of the issues has allowed us to see that the election-illegalities deniers are more interested in covering up unlawfulness than achieving justice.

Eastman is also fighting the “unprecedented weaponization of criminal law by radical District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia,” Fani Willis. I urge everyone to sign up for updates from Professor Eastman and donate at the JohnEastmanLegalDefenseFund.com.

Eastman still awaiting the results of his Stalinist show trial. His description of the tactics used against him by the Marxist scum sounds eerily like those employed by the swarming assholes at DebrisInflow.

Quote:Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman in Good Spirits About the Ongoing Lawfare Against Him, Both Prosecution and Disbarment Proceedings

March 6, 2024 Rachel Alexander
 


Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, who is undergoing lawfare as a result of his representation of Trump in the 2020 election challenges, is facing multiple legal proceedings but is in good spirits.

Eastman (pictured above), widely considered one of the top legal scholars on the right, who founded the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, served as dean for Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told The Arizona Sun Times during an interview that he remains “cheerful but defiant.”

The State Bar of California conducted a disciplinary trial to disbar him last year, and he is now awaiting the final outcome from California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while serving as a judge. Eastman is one of the defendants along with Trump and others in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s RICO prosecution. He is also an unnamed co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal case against Trump, which means it may not result in prosecution.

The legal actions against Eastman mainly come down to a short memo he gave to Trump that provided several options for dealing with the illegal activity in the 2020 election. During the disciplinary trial, it came out that contrary to the State Bar of California’s contention, Eastman did not urge then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral slates from states with suspected election fraud; instead, he suggested Pence could merely delay accepting them. It also came out that historically, vice presidents have exercised substantive authority when choosing to accept or reject electoral slates; their role is not purely ministerial, as the California Bar claimed.

The Los Angeles Times, which extensively covered the disciplinary trial, conducted a two-hour-long interview with Eastman recently. The reporter repeatedly asked him to describe how miserable he felt, but instead Eastman told him he is in great spirits. He said, “We’re in a war over whether we’re going to be free or not. I have ended up on the front lines and it’s an honor. It’s the fight for our times.”

The reporter didn’t get the story he sought because the interview was never published.

The Sun Times asked Eastman why he, unlike so many other leading conservative legal academics, chose to get involved with the 2020 election challenges helping Trump. He said Trump personally called him and asked him to help. He said watching the election corruption occur convinced him to get involved.

“What I saw was wrong,” he said, “It undermined the consent of the governed.”

Eastman said attorneys from big, powerful law firms were too afraid to get involved due to the cancel culture. Within five minutes of the voice of election integrity attorney Cleta Mitchell being identified on a key Georgia conference call where Trump discussed with election officials what could be done about the illegal activity, progressive activists went after her law firm. They ultimately forced her to resign.

Mitchell told The New York Times that progressives engaged in “a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups via social media and other means against me, my law firm and clients of the law firm.” She was employed by the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner.

Eastman explained that the site Martindale Hubble lists the major clients of large law firms, so activists contact employees at those businesses and get them to flood the law firms with complaints. Activists also scour the Democratic donor lists provided by Act Blue to discover who contributes to those businesses and contact them to get them to complain to the businesses.

He said this is because it’s not just about disbarring conservative attorneys; it’s about destroying them completely within their communities. Eastman cited an Axios interview with progressive activist David Brock. Brock is driving much of the efforts targeting conservative attorneys, advising The 65 Project, which is an organization that attempts to “hold accountable the lawyers who raise fraudulent claims to overturn legitimate elections results.”

Brock told Axios that the group’s approach is to “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.” He explained why they were going after so many attorneys, including little-known ones.

“I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we’re doing. You’re threatening their livelihood. And, you know, they’ve got reputations in their local communities,” he said.

While Eastman could not discuss much of the ongoing cases against him due to confidentiality, executive privilege, and other legal reasons, he noted that former Attorney General Ed Meese and two law professors submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2023 arguing that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Along with Steven G. Calabresi of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Gary S. Lawson of the Boston University School of Law, Meese told the court, “Improperly appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this court than Bryce Harper, Taylor Swift or Jeff Bezos.”

The trio said Attorney General Merrick Garland “exceeded his statutory and constitutional authority” when he appointed Smith in November 2022. They said federal law allows the attorney general to appoint attorneys to assist U.S. attorneys but not to replace them. The appointments clause requires all federal offices “not otherwise provided for” in the Constitution to be established by law, but no law establishes a special counsel. The appointments clause requires presidential nomination, Senate confirmation and presidential appointment for federal officers, which didn’t occur with Smith.

Should Roland recommend disbarment, Eastman could appeal up through the court system beginning with the California Supreme Court, which is composed of all Democrats. A constitutional scholar told The Sun Times previously that Eastman’s case appeared to have been presented with the U.S. Supreme Court in mind, emphasizing federal issues that the court would be interested in. Eastman estimates he needs $3 million to defend himself in the multiple proceedings and has raised $630,570 so far.

Quote:Judge rules John Eastman should be disbarred over efforts to overturn 2020 election 
by Ella Lee and Zach Schonfeld - 03/27/24 7:25 PM ET


A California judge on Wednesday recommended disbarring a lawyer at the center of former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

State Bar 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.  

“In view of the circumstances surrounding Eastman’s misconduct and balancing the aggravation and mitigation, the court recommends that Eastman be disbarred,” Roland wrote in a 128-page decision. 

The judge also recommended that Eastman be ordered to pay $10,000 in monetary sanctions to the State Bar of California Client Security Fund. 

Eastman’s legal team said he would appeal Wednesday’s ruling, and the case will ultimately end up before the California Supreme Court. In the meantime, the judge ordered Eastman be transferred to inactive status, meaning he won’t be able to practice law. 

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 Toni 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. 

Roland wrote in her decision that Eastman exhibited an unwillingness to admit to “any ethical lapses” in his behavior. 

“This lack of remorse and accountability presents a significant risk that Eastman may engage in further unethical conduct, compounding the threat to the public,” the judge wrote. 

Though Roland’s ruling marks a significant legal defeat for Eastman, she did side with him on one of his 11 counts.  

The state bar accused Eastman of moral turpitude over his Jan. 6 Ellipse speech, connecting it to the violence later in the day, but the judge dismissed the count after finding the bar “presented no evidence to show that Eastman’s statements contributed to the assault on the Capitol.”

In court filings, Eastman’s lawyers described the disbarment proceedings as “Orwellian,” insisting he was fulfilling his ethical duty to zealously represent Trump’s interests and that he had a First Amendment right to make his public statements at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and elsewhere. 

“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,” Eastman’s legal team said in a statement following the ruling.

“The process undertaken by Dr. Eastman in 2020 is the same process taken by lawyers every day and everywhere – indeed, that is the essence of what lawyers do,” it continued.

The state bar insisted that Eastman was fabricating “an illusion of legality to an illegal effort,” demanding he be disbarred. 
“Every California attorney has the duty to uphold the constitution and the rule of law,” Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona, whose office brought the discipline charges, said in a statement.  

“Mr. Eastman repeatedly violated that duty. Worse, he did so in a way that threatened the fundamental principles of our democracy,” Cardona continued.  

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.

Dr. Eastman Explains The Establishment’s Attack On Him For Questioning 2020 Election’s Legitimacy

Jeff Clark Wrote:John is a good man. Honorable, decent, wise. 

A gentleman and a scholar. A devoted father and Christian. 

This is an affront to justice in America. 

And more importantly, it is part of a one-party Marxist takeover. 

The new internationalist woke Establishment will only tolerate Democrats and token Republican uniparty “opposition.” 

But I know John will fight on. 

Support John: https://givesendgo.com/Eastman

https://twitter.com/JeffClarkUS/status/1...1079864654

Mollie Hemingway Wrote: This is expected, but still disgusting. Democrats' well-funded and well coordinated campaign to use lawfare and disbarment proceedings against political opponents is celebrated by corporate media. Even as Democrat lawyers who worked to remove the Republican nominee from the ballot were shot down 9-0 at the Supreme Court. And nothing has happened to them except for celebration by the same corporate media.

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1...5347733781

Dr. John Eastman, in his own words:

Quote:California Bar Ruling: A Travesty of Justice

Dr. John Eastman
Mar 28, 2024

Well, after an investigation that started 2 1/2 years ago when a leftist advocacy organization filed a bar complaint against me, and after 6 months of my responding to the Bar investigators demand for information letters, and after a 10-week trial that one commentator bet was the longest and most expensive in bar discipline history, the California Bar Court judge has issued her ruling — during Holy Week, no less — recommending that I be disbarred because, she asserts, that I made misrepresentations of hotly disputed facts and unresolved questions of constitutional law in my representation of former President Trump and his challenges to the illegality of the 2020 election, and because I also made those claims in public speeches, writings, and media appearances in which I highlighted illegality in the election (all of which is constitutionally protected speech). The ruling is here. My closing argument brief responding to every false allegation the Bar attorneys leveled against me, is here. My response to the Bar’s citation of a doctored quotation from a court opinion — just one of the many false claims they made — is here. Astoundingly, the Court repeated that doctored quotation in the opinion.

Over the coming days and weeks, I will be highlighting the evidence that demonstrates the contrary of the findings of misrepresentation made by the Court, and also the aspects of the “trial” that were simply beyond belief. News coverage of the 10-week trial, particularly that by Rachel Alexander at the Arizona Sun Times and in her twitter feed, was extensive. I linked a bunch of the most salient articles at Update #38 on my GiveSendGo website; worth a read so that you can see for yourselves what we were dealing with. A larger list of Rachel Alexander’s articles is attached below, with links. If you are really a glutton for punishment, you can read the trial transcripts — all 32 days of them! — or listen to the audio and then decide for yourselves whether I really had no evidence to support my claims of election illegality.

We will appeal the decision, of course, and hopefully the California Bar Review Court, the California Supreme Court, or the U.S. Supreme Court will step in to put a stop to this “lawfare” that has become a serious threat to the First Amendment, the right of controversial clients and causes to legal representation, and more broadly to our adversarial system of justice. Also attached below is the statement put out by my attorneys earlier this evening.

03 27 24 Press Release (006)
197KB ∙ PDF file
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List Of Rachel Alexander Articles About John Eastman's Bar Trial
137KB ∙ PDF file
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Marxists losing their decency? You can't lose something you never had.

Quote:Salvo 03.30.2024 5 minutes
Lawfare Against John Eastman
Thomas D. Klingenstein and Ryan P. Williams
 

The regime has lost all perspective and decency in its war on its perceived enemies.

Dr. John Eastman is a patriot, a constitutional scholar, a lawyer, a husband, and a father. He is our friend, colleague, and fellow board member of the Claremont Institute, who has spent his life defending the principles upon which this great nation was founded. After a ten week travesty of a trial, a California Bar Court judge, seeking to criminalize disagreements in constitutional interpretation, recommended that John should lose his license to practice law in California.

The term “lawfare” has become part of the American vernacular in the past few years. It means the manipulation and corruption of the legal system to gain political advantage and attack and destroy one’s political opponents. The most famous example of lawfare is, of course, the shocking abuse of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Attorney General’s office in the state of New York, and the District Attorney’s office in Fulton County Georgia in an attempt to destroy the current Republican candidate for the presidency, Donald J. Trump. But the assault on Trump is just the most widely publicized example of this evil practice, which is destroying the rule of law in America.

Anyone who dares to oppose the reigning progressive regime, at any level and in any way, is a potential target of this lawfare. Especially targeted are those who dared to raise any question about the legality of the 2020 election. Prominent among these is John Eastman.

In his case, an activist group, States United Democracy Center, joined other activists in filing an ethics complaint with the California State Bar Association. As David Brock, one of the leaders in this lawfare, explains, the aim of these activists is “not only [to] bring the grievances in the bar complaints but shame [their targets] and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.” Specifically, they aim not just to disbar, but to destroy, the 111 attorneys who were involved in legally challenging the 2020 election results.

The Bar Association, which is overwhelmingly progressive, then becomes complicit in the lawfare. The legal travesty John suffered during his judicial proceedings is vivid in the transcripts of the trial and has been described in detail by Rachel Alexander of the Arizona Sun Times, which provided comprehensive day-to-day coverage of the trial. The entire proceeding was a mockery of the impartial judging of professional conduct that should be expected in such a tribunal. It was partisan grandstanding with a judgment that seemed preordained from the first week.

John will appeal, of course, and we expect him to prevail. But his case is a warning to us all of the increasing criminalization of any challenge to the progressive orthodoxy, whether the subject is elections, climate, race, gender, the economy, public health, or the Constitution. Concerned citizens of all stripes, whatever their opinions on John’s representation of and advice to President Trump in 2020 and 2021, should regard this trend with alarm.

We stand by John, applaud his fortitude in standing up against these shameful and un-American attacks, and pray that his courage is contagious.