LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conservative attorney John Eastman, the chief architect of some of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election, was charged Thursday with several disciplinary charges in California that could lead to disbarment.
The chief trial counsel of the California State Bar, George Cardona, said that the 11 charges stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a strategy – not supported by facts – to invalidate the legitimate results of the 2020 election by blocking the number of electoral votes from certain states.
The office is going to seek Eastman’s disbarment.
Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University’s law school in Southern California, was one of Trump’s lawyers during the election. He wrote a memo saying former Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by overturning the election results during a joint session of Congress held to count electoral votes. Critics have compared it to instructions to carry out a coup.
The State Bar said Eastman faces charges that he violated business and professional codes by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.”
Eastman denies “every aspect” of the charges filed by the State Bar, which are based on his role as the former president’s post-election counsel, his attorney, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement.
The State Bar action “is part of a national effort to use the bar’s disciplinary process to punish lawyers who opposed the current administration in the last presidential election. Americans of both political parties should be concerned about the politicization of our state bar,” said Miller.
In advising Trump, “Eastman’s assessment is the product of thorough research into the law and historical record — including the 12th Amendment and the Election Counting Act — supported by a reasonable interpretation of legal and historical precedent, scholarly analysis, and legislative history,” Miller added. .
“He was a lawyer, not Rasputin,” Miller said.
The bar announced in March that it was investigating Eastman for possible ethics violations.
As the State Bar’s chief legal counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes attorney disciplinary matters before the State Bar Court, which may recommend attorneys be suspended or, in some cases, lose their license to practice law. The California Supreme Court decided what to do.
Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to his website. He was a law clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.
Eastman retired as dean of Chapman University’s law school last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.
In his statement, Cardona said that the charges allege that Eastman “violated this duty in an attempt to seize the will of the American people and invalidate the results of the election for the highest office in the country – an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy.”