After a hearing officer found John Eastman culpable for his conduct representing former President Donald Trump, the ex-Chapman University law school dean was defiant in new testimony.
The lengthy State Bar of California disciplinary proceedings, which began in June and once were projected to finish in August, has focused on Eastman’s efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
The hearing’s judicial officer, Yvette D. Roland, handed down a ruling of preliminary culpability as a way to streamline the disbarment hearings to focus on evidence of aggravation or mitigation.
Eastman faces other legal challenges linked to his role as a presidential adviser, including his Georgia election-fraud indictment, along with former Trump and 17 other defendants. He entered a plea of not guilty in September.
On Thursday, the final day of the proceedings at the State Bar courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, Eastman took the stand once again to defend his actions following and accuse investigators of pursuing a politically motivated case.
When Eastman was asked if he said in an online interview during the hearings that attorneys for the State Bar should be punished, he acknowledged that they have immunity. He added, though, that they should lose their law license if not for that.
“I disagree I made false statements,” Eastman responded to the bar’s attorney. “But you clearly made false statements.”
Eastman added that, “In my view none of the conduct (as an attorney for Trump) violated any ethical standards of the California bar.”
State Bar attorney Duncan Carling also pointed to a fundraising letter Eastman sent out that accused “activist lawyers” of targeting him in the bar complaint. Eastman said he did not personally use those words, but the letter went out in his name.
“We’ve gone on for 10 weeks now and it’s rather expensive” to defend himself, Eastman said of the fundraiser.
“But for my affiliation with Trump, we wouldn’t be here,” Eastman said.
Eastman declared the bar proceeding as “unprecedented,” and that he was facing disbarment because, “I was a representative of President Trump, who, in many circles of this country, is not very liked.”
He described his arguments regarding claims of election fraud as being presented in “good faith.”
“I’ve not heard any challenge to my allegations that there was illegality in respect to the election, and the question whether those illegalities open the door to fraud are very hard to prove,” Eastman said.
He also defended his belief that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block certification of Biden’s election. Eastman argued that the vice president’s authority remained “unsettled” law.
But at one point during the weeks of testimony Roland pointed out that in all the years since the Electoral Count Act was established in 1887 no one has sued to challenge its constitutionality.
Pence’s attorney, Greg Jacob, however, testified in the proceedings that he did not believe his former boss had any authority in election certification beyond the ceremonial reading of results from the Electoral College.
Eastman has argued that Pence could have delayed the certification to allow for state legislatures to continue looking to see if fraud had affected the results.
Jacob emphasized to Eastman and Trump in a meeting shortly before the Jan. 6 riots outside the Capitol that in the entire country’s history no vice president had ever asserted himself into the electoral vote certification.
Attorneys on both sides are expected to submit further arguments in paper by Nov. 22. Roland will issue a ruling within 90 days their submissions.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, argued for further hearings so Eastman could rebut one of the state bar’s expert witnesses, but Roland rejected that request.
“I’m not going to add more days,” she said.
Miller said in all of the discussions about the “choreographing” of evidence it was assumed Eastman would get a chance to rebut the final expert witness, but Roland said, “You have a different choreographer than I do.”
– City News Service