Trump adviser Eastman faces California disciplinary fees

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conservative legal professional John Eastman, a lead architect of a few of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in energy after the 2020 election, was slapped Thursday with a sequence of disciplinary fees in California that might result in his disbarment.

The State Bar of California’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, mentioned in an announcement that the 11 fees stem from allegations that Eastman assisted Trump with a method — not supported by details — to overturn the professional outcomes of the 2020 election by obstructing the rely of electoral votes of sure states.

The workplace intends to hunt Eastman’s disbarment.

Eastman, the previous dean of Chapman College regulation college in Southern California, was one in all Trump’s attorneys in the course of the election. He wrote a memo that argued former Vice President Mike Pence might hold Trump in energy by overturning the outcomes of the election throughout a joint session of Congress convened to rely electoral votes. Critics have likened that to directions for staging a coup.

The State Bar mentioned Eastman faces fees that he violated the enterprise and professions code by making false and deceptive statements that represent acts of “ethical turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.”

Eastman disputes “each facet” of the costs filed by the State Bar, that are based mostly on his function as counsel to the previous president after the election, his legal professional, Randall A. Miller, mentioned in an announcement.

The State Bar’s motion “is a part of a nationwide effort to make use of the bar self-discipline course of to penalize attorneys who opposed the present administration within the final presidential election. People of each political events needs to be troubled by this politicization of our nation’s state bars,” Miller’s assertion mentioned.

In advising Trump, “Eastman’s assessments had been the product of complete analysis of the regulation and historic data — together with the twelfth Modification and Electoral Depend Act — supported by affordable interpretation of authorized and historic precedent, scholarly evaluation, and legislative historical past,” Miller added.

“He was a lawyer, not Rasputin,” Miller mentioned.

The bar disclosed in March that it was investigating Eastman for potential ethics violations.

Because the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, Cardona investigates and prosecutes legal professional disciplinary issues earlier than the State Bar Court docket, which may suggest attorneys be both suspended or, in some instances, lose their licenses to apply regulation. The California Supreme Court docket in the end decides what to do.

Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, in line with its web site. He was a regulation clerk for U.S. Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Middle for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a regulation agency affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California legal professional basic in 2010, ending second within the Republican major.

Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman College regulation college final yr after greater than 160 school members signed a letter calling for the college to take motion towards him.

In his assertion, Cardona mentioned the costs allege that Eastman “violated this obligation in furtherance of an try to usurp the desire of the American individuals and overturn election outcomes for the best workplace within the land — an egregious and unprecedented assault on our democracy.”