LOS ANGELES (CN) — The California State Bar Tuesday commenced a hearing to determine if attorney John Eastman, a key actor in a plan to convince Congress to invalidate the 2020 election results, should lose his license to practice law.
In February 2022, former Donald Trump lawyer Eastman withheld hundreds of emails subpoenaed by the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — claiming attorney-client privilege.
A Chapman University professor, Eastman played a key role crafting the legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could help overturn the election results, according to the committee's attorney Douglas Letter. In January, U.S. District Judge David Carter ordered Eastman to review 1,500 pages a day, producing any relevant documents and keeping a log of all privileged documents.
That month the California State Bar filed 11 disciplinary charges against Eastman and sought to strip him of his license to practice law.
Eastman wrote two memos laying out a strategy for denying and reversing the results of the election. U.S. District Judge David Carter said that strategy violated the Electoral Count Act and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
A federal grand jury in Washington has been meeting for months to hear testimony from witnesses, including Pence, who has publicly described Trump's pressure campaign to convince him to stop Congress’ certification of the election results and Biden’s win.
In Tuesday’s hearing, California Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland said she will not accept evidence that seeks to prove or disprove stipulated facts. She will allow both sides to have an expert listen to Eastman’s testimony and to each others’ testimonies.
Eastman’s attorney Randy Miller did not convince Roland to include testimony from some experts, whom she said did not prove their experience in analyzing election data.
State Bar attorney Duncan Carling said the court will find that Eastman’s conduct was “fundamentally dishonest” — and that Eastman and Trump pressured Pence to override every branch of government by throwing out votes and declaring Trump the winner.
“Eastman promoted Trump’s strategy by fabricating a baseless legal theory which he justified with false and frivolous statements about duel electors and election fraud,” Carling said.
“All of his misconduct had one purpose: to obstruct the electoral count on Jan. 6 and stop vice president Mike Pence from verifying Joe Biden as the winner of the election," he added. "He was fully aware in real time that his plan was damaging the nation.”
Miller said in his opening statement that the case turns on whether Eastman’s actions are covered under legally protected speech and the tenability of the information he used.
“What the essential inquiry is for the court as the trier of fact, the determiner of the legal issues of tenability, is the lawyer’s actions,” he said. “Would any reasonable lawyer find those actions tenable?”
Eastman himself testified for nearly three hours.
Under Carling’s questioning, Eastman said he relied on election analyses from different “experts.” Carling pointed out data discrepancies that were later found, such as issues with an independent audit of the Georgia election, which Eastman said were errors in the report that a certified public accountant produced.
Eastman said despite that accountant’s lack of experience, he thought the data looked credible.
However, he added: “There was a lot of information coming in very quickly, so I can’t say I read every one of them.”
The State Bar played videos of Eastman telling legislators to “preserve” state election integrity by calling special elections or selecting alternate electors. Eastman claimed he never saw Georgia’s Secretary of State’s ruling out unfair play at voting machines, or upholding the election after auditing ballots, because he was sick with Covid-19 in November 2020.
“I was not encouraging or discouraging, I was responding to a request for a legal opinion,” he said.
Eastman continually repeated claims that he believes the 2020 election was invalid and admitted to working with Rudy Giuliani’s team in December 2020.
The attorney also appeared to evade questions about a call he made to the Republican National Committee, according to Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, saying the Committee must gather Trump electors in case legal challenges changed electoral results. He repeatedly said that attorney-client privilege prevents disclosing who else he discussed the issue with.
Roland grew exasperated, repeatedly asking Carling’s question, until Eastman said, “It’s possible I did, I don’t recall.” The judge said that he is not interpreting the law around attorney advice correctly and repeatedly stopped Miller from answering for his client.
“Mr. Eastman, you don’t get to frame or reframe a question into the one you want answered,” Roland told the defendant.
The State Bar will hold hearings in this case through June 30.
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