Judge recommends ex-Trump election lawyer John Eastman be disbarred

An attorney discipline judge in California has recommended that ex-Trump election lawyer John Eastman be disbarred, according to an opinion released on Wednesday.

Eastman will lose his ability to practice law within days, because the court’s decision involuntarily revokes his license, according to the opinion.

Judge Yvette Roland’s opinion comes after a lengthy trial about Eastman’s actions as he led some of the efforts for Donald Trump to challenge his 2020 election loss. The opinion serves as a recommendation to the California Supreme Court, which will ultimately decide whether to endorse or reject the punishment. Eastman will have the opportunity to appeal Roland’s ruling.

Still, the judge’s opinion marks a major step in the consequences for lawyers who propelled false theories of election fraud on Trump’s behalf.

“Eastman failed to uphold his primary duty of honesty and breached his ethical obligations by presenting falsehoods to bolster his legal arguments,” Roland wrote.

“In sum, Eastman exhibited gross negligence by making false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon,” she wrote.

The judge also rejected Eastman’s efforts to argue that he believed lies about election fraud were true, writing that “Eastman cannot avoid culpability through his willful blindness—willful blindness that is tantamount to Eastman’s actual knowledge that the allegations regarding hidden ballots were false.”

Decisions like the California judge’s could further destroy the credibility of lawyers who rallied around Trump after the election while cutting them out of circles where some, like Eastman – who has spent his career as a law professor and a frequent author of Supreme Court amicus briefs – have functioned as conservative thought-leaders​.

An attorney for Eastman, Randy Miller, said in a statement Wednesday that Eastman maintains he worked as he should have on legal issues after the 2020 election for his then-client Trump.

Miller also attacked the bar’s immediate revocation of Eastman’s law license as unfair, because he cannot work as a lawyer at a time when he needs funds to fight criminal charges in Georgia that are also related to his 2020 election work for Trump.