FILE – Attorney John Eastman, the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power, talks to reporters after a hearing in Los Angeles, June 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Conservative attorney John Eastman is pleading with California ethics authorities to let him continue practicing law as he faces his own looming criminal trial on racketeering (RICO) charges in Georgia.
On Wednesday, Eastman filed a 50-page motion with the California State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel asking to stay a judge’s recent order recommending his disbarment over various failed efforts to use the legal system to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“While attorneys have a duty to advocate zealously for their clients, they must do so within the bounds of ethical and legal constraints,” State Bar Court Judge Yvette D. Roland wrote in her late March order. “Eastman’s actions transgressed those ethical limits by advocating, participating in and pursuing a strategy to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election that lacked evidentiary or legal support. Vigorous advocacy does not absolve Eastman of his professional responsibilities around honesty and upholding the rule of law.”
In her order, Roland placed Eastman on inactive enrollment; the final decision on his law license is up to the California Supreme Court.
The erstwhile Donald Trump ally is asking for the judge’s order to be paused so he can continue to represent his clients and earn money as he mounts his own legal defense in the Georgia RICO case.
“If the Order placing Dr. Eastman on inactive enrollment is not stayed, not only would it be highly prejudicial to Dr. Eastman, it would also be highly prejudicial to his clients,” the stay motion argues.
Eastman’s attorneys also vouch for his legal acumen.
“Dr. Eastman has built his professional reputation upon his representation of clients in constitutional law matters and many clients and counsel seek him out for his expertise in these matters,” the stay motion reads. “If the Order placing Dr. Eastman on inactive enrollment were not stayed, those clients would be harmed by depriving them of the breadth and depth of Dr. Eastman’s knowledge and prowess as a zealous advocate.”
If the embattled lawyer cannot work for his current clients, Eastman and his attorneys argue, he will not be able to pay his own extensive, and likely growing, legal bills — payments directly related back to his prior representation of Trump in election denial litigation and strategy.
“[I]f the Order placing Dr. Eastman on inactive enrollment were not stayed, Dr. Eastman would lose his ability to make a living as an attorney,” the Wednesday stay motion argues.
And, his attorneys say, being unable to afford attorneys could not come at a worse time for their client due to his Georgia charges.
“Undoubtedly, the loss of income from the practice of law in the face of such necessity would be highly prejudicial to Dr. Eastman’s ability to defend himself in Fulton County,” the motion continues.
After his ethics trial began in June 2023, Eastman was charged in Georgia with nine counts over his participation in an alleged criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results with 18 other co-defendants, including Trump, in a 41-count criminal indictment.
In November 2023, Roland issued a preliminary finding of culpability over Eastman’s various election-thwarting efforts.
Eastman infamously authored two of many so-called “coup memos.” Those memos advised on potential scenarios under which President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory could be set aside.
Additionally, the former Chapman University law professor backed a similarly failed effort to overturn the 2020 election at the U.S. Supreme Court launched by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The Lone Star State gambit decried mail-in voting expansion as a “massive opportunity of fraud,” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin and argued that even the “appearance of fraud in a close” race could be enough to review “even if no election fraud had resulted.” In the end, only two justices — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — wanted to hear those arguments and the high court passed.
Notably, in his own defense, the conservative lawyer maintains a defiant tone about the nature of his pro-Trump legal efforts.
“In the Fall of 2020 and January 2021, I represented former President Trump and his campaign committee in their efforts to challenge illegality in the conduct of the November 2020 presidential election,” Eastman writes in an accompanying declaration. “In responding to more than a dozen actions arising out of that representation, I have incurred more than $1 million in legal fees and expenses to date, and estimate that the total that I will incur before these various matters have concluded will be as much as $3 million to $3.5 million.”
In addition to his own declaration, the stay motion is buttressed by six current clients who say they want to keep their lawyer — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
In substantially similar language, both GOP elected officials write: “I have personally reviewed the D.C. and Georgia indictments, and believe that the various charges and allegations against Dr. Eastman are meritless and politically motivated.”
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