The recommendation that the attorney John Eastman be disbarred and expelled from the lawyering profession underscores the professional as well as personal peril faced by President Trump’s legal camarilla. 

Judge Yvette Roland, of the State Bar Court of California, found that Mr. Eastman “conspired with President Trump to obstruct a lawful function of the government of the United States; specifically, by conspiring to disrupt the electoral count on January 6, 2021.” Mr. Eastman plans to appeal to the California Supreme Court.

It is a stunning development for Mr. Eastman, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, the founder of a constitutional center at the Claremont Institute, and the one time dean of Chapman University School of Law. In addition to facing the prospect of a lost law license, he is a defendant in the Georgia racketeering case brought by the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis and an unindicted co-conspirator of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Mr. Eastman’s troubles all revolve around his role advising Mr. Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election. At an Oval Office meeting on January 5, 2021, he allegedly urged Vice President Pence not to certify President Biden as the election’s winner, the 12th Amendment notwithstanding. Mr. Pence rejected that advice, and instead performed his constitutional duty.  

Mr. Eastman faced 11 charges before the State Bar Court, the only one of its kind in America. Judge Roland found him liable on 10 of those charges. The State Bar of California, which sought to expel Mr. Eastman from its ranks, accused the former dean of Chapman Law School, of  “moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.” Judge Roland denounces an “unwillingness to acknowledge any ethical lapses regarding his actions.”

Judge Roland, who heard months of argument over whether Mr. Eastman’s counsel placed him outside the bounds of his profession, writes that the “most severe available professional sanction is warranted to protect the public and preserve the public confidence in the legal system.” She appears to be particularly incensed by Mr. Eastman’s repeated proffering of unsupported claims of fraud.

In a press release provided to the Sun, a representative for Mr. Eastman, Randall Miller, insists that the “process undertaken by Dr. Eastman in 2020 is the same process taken by lawyers every day and everywhere –indeed, that is the essence of what lawyers do.” They add that Mr. Eastman holds as “inviolate” the obligation for attorneys to be “zealous advocates for their clients.”

Mr. Miller allows that Mr. Eastman is “facing serious and complex criminal charges” in Georgia, but that he “has not been convicted of any crime.” He notes the “inherent unfairness of prohibiting a presumed-innocent defendant from being able to earn the funds needed to pay for the enormous expenses required to defend himself.” This due process argument could surface on appeal. In the meantime, Mr. Eastman will be banned from practicing law. 

Judge Rokand, though, in her 128 page opinion, found that Mr. Eastman “failed to uphold his primary duty of honesty and breached his ethical obligations by presenting falsehoods to bolster his legal arguments.”  Her ruling comes just one day after another lawyer who advised Mr. Trump, Jeffrey Clark, began his own disbarment trial at the District of Columbia.