Following the indictment of President Trump in the 2020 election case, one of the attorneys who helped him advance the theory that Vice President Pence could reject Electoral College votes, John Eastman, is asking the California State Bar Court to delay his disbarment proceedings amid expectations that he, too, could be indicted. 

In a court filing made public on Monday, Mr. Eastman’s attorneys, Randall Miller and Zachary Mayer, asked that the court reassess the regulatory charges levied against him amid “the likelihood that formal charges will be brought against” Mr. Eastman in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Messrs. Miller and Mayer asked the Bar Court that the disbarment proceedings, for what the state bar alleges is “moral turpitude,” be delayed for three months. “A stay is warranted in the interests of justice, as recent developments in the investigation have renewed and intensified” Mr. Eastman’s “concerns that the federal government might bring charges against him and that he will therefore need to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in this proceeding,” the attorneys wrote. 

The indictment handed up by a grand jury at the District of Columbia alleges Mr. Trump committed a number of crimes with the help of six co-conspirators, none of whom are named in the indictment. One attorney for Mr. Eastman, Harvey Silverglate, previously told the Sun that he was certain Mr. Eastman was the second unnamed co-conspirator in the indictment, though he was surprised that the Department of Justice did not show his client the “common courtesy” of informing Mr. Eastman that he was, in fact, listed as a co-conspirator. 

The California State Bar brought professional charges against Mr. Eastman in January for his involvement in Mr. Trump’s attempts to halt the counting of electoral votes. 

In a press release from the California State Bar announcing the charges, it claims that he “engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.”

The California State Bar’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in a statement that the charges stemmed from Mr. Eastman’s “moral turpitude” during his time advising the then-president. The bar is seeking to ban Mr. Eastman from practicing law in California, where he lives. 

“There is nothing more sacrosanct to our American democracy than free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power,” Mr. Cardona wrote. “For California attorneys, adherence to the U.S. and California Constitutions is their highest legal duty. The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land.”