ARGUMENT: DEMOCRACY WATCHJohn Eastman and the Limits of Bar Discipline
The memos prepared by John Eastman constitute some of the most disturbing documentation of the plot to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump. Eastman’s legal analysis sets out a range of supposed options by which swing-state electors from states supporting Joe Biden could be disregarded, thus handing Trump a second term in office. The State Bar of California announced that it will be seeking his disbarment from the practice of law over his role fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Eastman “has now entered the select club of lawyers finally facing bar discipline for their involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” Quinta Jurecic writes.
The memos prepared by John Eastman constitute some of the most disturbing documentation of the plot to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump. Eastman’s legal analysis sets out a range of supposed options by which, during the certification of the electoral vote on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could disregard swing-state electors from states supporting Joe Biden and thus hand Trump a second term in office.
Quinta Jurecic writes in Lawfare that the memos, delivered to the Trump campaign on Dec. 23, 2020, and Jan. 3, 2021, formed a key part of Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence into overturning the results of a free and fair election. They’re a bracing read, in part because of the smug self-assuredness of Eastman’s prose: “BOLD, Certainly,” Eastman concludes of his scheme in the Jan. 3 memo.
Jurecic continues:
Bold indeed. Just over two years after Eastman drafted those words, the State Bar of California announced that it will be seeking his disbarment from the practice of law over his role fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection—and Eastman’s memos play a starring role in the bar’s official filing against him. He has now entered the select club of lawyers finally facing bar discipline for their involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. So far, he remains unbowed, denouncing the bar’s filing on his Substack as “filled with distortions, half truths, and outright falsehoods.”
Jurecic notes that the California bar’s charges against Eastman , arriving weeks after the Jan. 6 committee wrapped up its work, are a reminder that accountability for the insurrection has been slow in the making. “They’re worth a close look to understand what work professional discipline can do in terms of holding lawyers responsible for their role in Jan. 6—as well as what it can’t.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed the Texas v. Pennsylvania, which the Supreme Court declined to hearon Dec. 11, is currently facing disciplinary proceedingsbrought by the State Bar of Texas over his role in the litigation. The charges against Paxton are similar to those brought by the California bar against Eastman: Paxton, the Texas bar alleges, made “dishonest” assertions of election fraud “not supported by any charge, indictment, judicial finding, and/or credible or admissible evidence,” in violation of Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 8.04(a).
