2023 Booking photo from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office (Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Embattled attorney John Eastman is taking a wee victory lap in what has been an eventful September — even as he battles to keep his law license and raise $1.5 million for his legal defense.
“Happy Constitution Day, everyone,” Eastman wrote in a GiveSendGo fundraising update on Sept. 17, “the day in 1787 that our founders concluded their work after a long, hot summer in Philadelphia and submitted the proposed Constitution to the people of the several states for deliberation and ratification.
“Ben Franklin was famously asked, ‘What have you given us, A republic or a monarchy?’ He responded, ‘A Republic, if you can keep it!’ Keeping it requires constant vigilence, and today that means, in part, fighting against the lawfare that is wreaking havoc on our justice system.”
This “lawfare” is, incidentally, also wreaking havoc on the career, reputation and pocketbook of Eastman, former dean of Chapman University Law School. He’s the target of criminal prosecutions in two states and what he suspects is “the longest, most expensive bar disciplinary proceeding in history” here at home.
But Eastman relished “some major headway on both fronts” in September.
California
The litany of withering charges against Eastman from the California Bar included moral turpitude, dishonesty and/or corruption, willful misconduct and/or gross negligence, trying to reverse the legitimate results of an election and essentially yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.
John Eastman (left) at a rally in support of President Trump in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. (JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Back in March, a California State Bar judge ruled that Eastman betrayed the fundamental oaths he swore to uphold as a licensed attorney when he spread untruths about the 2020 election and tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power, thus should lose his license. Eastman’s lawyers filed an 85-page “tour de force” in response on Sept. 13, demanding that conclusion must be rejected.
“This disciplinary prosecution is an extraordinary, unprecedented, and abjectly misguided foray by the California Bar into the 2020 presidential election, one of the most hotly debated, disputed, and controversial elections in our nation’s history – and in which lawyers on all sides played prominent roles before, during, and after – Dr. Eastman amongst them,” the colorful brief says.
“Yet, out of that legal conflagration, the Bar selectively plucks Dr. Eastman from the election-litigation scrum to prosecute him for his research, legal advice, role as counsel of record in consequential court cases, and public statements – all on behalf of clients who sought his active and zealous advocacy and legal and constitutional acumen.”
“The stupefying result” ravaged Eastman’s First Amendment rights to speech and to petition the government, violated due process and wreaked of bias and partisanship, they argue. “In sum, this prosecution should never have taken place. It is, rather, a manifestation of George Orwell’s dystopic depiction of authoritarianism – statements by the Government, no matter how demonstrably false or suspect, must be accepted as truth.”
The State Bar judge hearing the case would scoff. “While attorneys have a duty to advocate zealously for their clients, they must do so within the bounds of ethical and legal constraints,” she wrote. “Eastman’s actions transgressed those ethical limits by advocating, participating in and pursuing a strategy to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election that lacked evidentiary or legal support. Vigorous advocacy does not absolve Eastman of his professional responsibilities around honesty and upholding the rule of law.”
Georgia
Several of the original nine counts filed against Eastman in Fulton County — over what prosecutors say was an attempt to overturn the election results — have been dismissed.
The essence is that state charges about filing false documents in federal court can’t stand.
But six charges against Eastman remain, “including, unbelievably, the Racketeering conspiracy charge,” Eastman wrote. “But we have a great legal team in place and we’re prepared for the long haul, once the Georgia Court of Appeals determines whether Fani Willis can continue to prosecute the case or, instead, is disqualified and the case gets transferred to a different prosecutor.”
You can read the rulings here and here.
Arizona
Eastman faces charges related to attempting to overturn election results in Arizona as well.
There, “We filed an important ‘anti-SLAPP’ motion seeking to dismiss the indictment as a violation of First Amendment rights,” Eastman wrote. “A couple of years ago, Arizona became the first State in the Union to include criminal prosecutions in its anti-SLAPP statute. The hearing originally scheduled for a few hours on August 26 ending up lasting 3 days. We believe we made a compelling argument for why the case should be dismissed, and now await the judge’s ruling.”
The judge set a tentative trial date for January 2026, he said, stressing that he’ll need money to cover the fees of his “terrific legal team.”
“The left’s efforts to bleed me dry is one of the key goals of their lawfare attacks — to keep me on defense and scare others from ever taking on the kind of cases I’m known for, protecting our constitutional rights against an increasingly abusive government,” he wrote.
Money
Eastman’s GiveSendGo page asked donors for $200,000 back in 2022.
That rose to $500,000 in 2023. And $750,000 last spring. Eastman’s goal now stands at $1.5 million.
He had received $856,078 as of May; raised a bit more than $40,000 over the summer; and is just shy of $900,000 as of last week.
The “surreal, exhausting battle to defend my integrity,” as he put it in one fundraising email, will cost some $3 million to $3.5 million.
Eastman’s fringe legal theories (that the vice president had the power to reject state counts, postpone the count and/or recognize “alternate” state electors) functioned as “a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States,” Vice President Mike Pence’s attorney wrote to Eastman as the rioters swarmed on Jan. 6. “Thanks to your (expletive), we are now under siege.”
Eastman paints his critics as out-of-control leftists — but many conservatives have withering words for him as well.
“Is President Trump’s re-election campaign better off or worse with John Eastman’s legal advice?” mused Laguna Niguel attorney James V. Lacy, who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations and is rooting for Trump.
A protester screams “Freedom” inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob during a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“I’d say it is worse off, as Eastman’s ridiculous conclusion as a constitutional lawyer that Vice President Mike Pence could throw a monkey wrench into presidential succession in 2021 is at the very heart of the Left’s claims that Trump’s re-election ‘will end democracy.’… Eastman is going to get disbarred, he is ultimately going to lose his license to practice before the Supreme Court, and I hope Trump wins to save democracy, this time with sane legal advice.”
There’s much fear and loathing around the election — we seem primed for chaos no matter who wins.
“I am very happy to hear of your recent success in GA and am praying for continued success. Evil is really being exposed but we know good will win. God bless you and your family. You are a true PATRIOT and it’s being proven by how rabidly they are coming after you,” $55 donor Deborah Forbeck wrote to Eastman last week.
A group of attorneys will be watching for Eastman-like antics. Ads are set to run in swing state legal journals reminding lawyers that they’re ethically barred from bringing false claims on behalf of any client.
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