John Eastman, Nationally Recognized Constitutional Scholar, Disbarred For...Zealously Representing His Client
I'm so old I still think that is exactly what a lawyer is sworn to do.. New World?
We might as well be living in the days leading up to the launch of the Third Reich or the early days of Stalin’s Soviet Russia in some aspects of our current life in America in which we are asked to take seriously that this person can pass judgment on the ethics and professionalism and morality of one of the great constitutional scholars of his time, Dr. John Eastman, and recommend that his license to practice law be taken away from him:
This is Yvette Roland, “State Bar Judge” of the California Bar, who just handed down her encyclopaedia-length ruling on why Dr. Eastman should be disbarred, after announcing in advance that this would be her decision before his trial was even completed.
This case grabbed my attention for several reasons not the least of which was the fact that I listened to and viewed several webinars moderated by Dr. Eastman, sponsored by the Claremont Institute, and learned a great deal from them due to the considerable breadth of knowledge of the legal concepts being considered by the various panels contributed by Dr. Eastman. Another reason was the fact that while still in the active practice of law I gave, in behalf of the Committee on Professionalism of the Louisiana Bar, a number of lectures about general principles in that field, including the one most applicable here, the duty of a lawyer to zealously pursue every possible avenue in behalf of his or her client. This is precisely what Dr. Eastman was doing on behalf of his client, the then-President of the United States Donald Trump, in advocating a well-researched interpretation of the law on behalf of President Trump in the process of the certification of the count of the Electoral College ballots in January, 2021.
But a further reason, beyond my admiration and respect for Dr. Eastman and my knowledge of the basic ethical principles involved in his persecution prosecution by the California Bar, is the far more important reason that this seems to be a part of a concerted effort by President Trump’s enemies - and they are legion- to assure that he will never be able to secure legal representation as they are demonstrating time and time again what can happen to you if you have the temerity to not only represent him but to -gasp!- do so zealously with every possible argument you can possibly muster in his behalf.
The 65 Project: Insidious Intimidation Tool of the Far Left
As a matter of fact, this very objective is being pursued by a sleazy organization named “The 65 Project” for the number of lawsuits filed on the President’s behalf to address the well-documented irregularities in the 2020 Presidential election. Here is a brief description of this group’s goals:
A dark money group with connections to the Democratic Party is reportedly looking to disbar and discredit more than 100 lawyers who worked on former President Trump’s post-election lawsuits.
The 65 Project, named after the 65 lawsuits filed to overturn the 2020 election results, has already filed 10 ethics complaints and will air advertisements in contentious states as part of the plan, which was first reported by Axios.
On its website, the group notes that judges appointed by both parties found Trump’s election fraud filings “bogus and riddled with false statements” following the election.
Any doubt as to the vicious objective of the organization should be dispelled by listening to the words of one of its founders and advisors, the reptillian David Brock:
Staffed by highly partisan Democrats, the group is being advised by David Brock, a Hillary Clinton acolyte and founder of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that “fact-checks” conservative media outlets. While speaking with Axios about the 65 Project last year, Brock made clear the group’s explicit goal is to “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints” against conservative lawyers who signed onto Republicans’ 2020 election challenges, “but [to] shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.”
In other words, to put what they are trying to do in plain English, to destroy their lives and their families’ lives and their very means of making a living. Or, to use a word used often in connection with despotic and tyrannical regimes, to “disappear” them.
The Eastman disbarment ruling may be regarded as the group’s major “achievement” to date and it is certain there will be more such “lawfare” attacks accross the country as already shown by the disbarment and ultimate bankruptcy of the man who was once known as “America’s Mayor” after September 11, Rudy Guliani. But the list of those targeted by this vile group of vermin grows every day. According to an article published before the 2022 , mid-term elections,
The 65 Project plans to file ethics complaints against 111 attorneys across 26 states while also airing ads against them in key battlegrounds such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
After repeating their objective on their website and in other materials is to target Repubican electoral challenges, the pure corruption and hypocrisy of the entire organization is reflected in this virtue-signalling statement of its Managing Director:
Although the 65 Project claims to be a “bipartisan” enterprise (two NeverTrump Republicans sit on its board), when asked whether Democratic attorneys who challenge election results will also be targeted, Managing Director Michael Teter told The Federalist: “We don’t examine a lawyer’s party affiliation as part of our review. If we determine that an attorney has violated the rules of professional conduct, abandoned their oath, and sought to subvert democracy through fabricated, bogus claims, we file a bar complaint. If there’s a partisan outcome from that process, the question is why? Fortunately, the January 6th Committee and the array of Republicans testifying have largely provided the answer.”
That there are actually American citizens who will believe this pack of lies (and who, presumably, will vote for the re-election of the pitiful nursing home patient currently occupying the Oval Office) is one of the most, if not the most, damning indictments of American society one can find today.
Dr. John Eastman: Foremost Constitutional Scholar, Attorney, and an American Hero
Who is John Eastman? He is a highly respected scholar of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, a former professor and Dean of the Chapman School of Law, founder of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at Claremont Institute and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He is, perhaps excepting only President Trump, the purest form of nemesis for the Marxist far left wing of the Democrat Party which has recently become close to the entirety of the Democrat Party.
Here is the way an article in American Greatness described Dr. Eastman and his efforts in behalf of President Trump, entitled, appropriately in my view, John Eastman is an American Hero:
John Eastman has been accumulating this evidence [of election irregularities] (see, for example, here and here) for over a year and a half. It is certainly fair to disagree with his conclusions, but to claim that there is “no evidence” seems to be sinking to the level of the J6 committee propagandists. It was because he thought the unconstitutional violations of election law in several swing states could indeed have affected the outcome of the election, that John put his life on the line to try to stop what he had good reason to believe was an unconstitutional election.
I do not say lightly, “put his life on the line.” We have all seen over the past several years, how the increasingly Stalinist Democratic (bipartisan) machine comes to destroy anyone who dares to challenge or disagree with it. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is just one vivid recent example among many: first the machine sinks to the depths of evil to assassinate his character, then a literal assassin shows up at his door.
In John’s case, the Stalinist machine has not only imposed on him hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees, and sicced armed FBI agents on him in his neighborhood, it is trying to make it impossible for him to earn a living, and it is threatening to give him the un-American and tyrannical treatment meted out to the January 6 political prisoners (read everything Julie Kelly writes on this).
In the meantime, the local papers, part of the machine, publish the vicinity of his home and inform their readers how to obtain his address. Machine street thugs follow up, spray-painting his address on the street and on the bridge leading to his home, with “Eastman Traitor,” and even with an arrow pointing toward his house.
He finds long spikes buried in the end of his dirt driveway, which have damaged tires on family cars and cars of visitors. Demonstrators gather daily, becoming more and more aggressive. A constant stream of hate email and voice messages, some of them criminal, makes it impossible to answer either his landline or cell without going first to voicemail.
That is the way the Stalinist Democratic (and now, bipartisan) machine operates, and it has become increasingly violent, even frenzied, in the past five years.
John Eastman is standing up to the tyrannical violence of this machine, because he thinks the Stalinist (bipartisan) Democrats are not just tyrants but usurpers. I agree with him and so think he is an American hero.
What, exactly did John Eastman do to make him such a clear and present danger to ‘Our Democracy™’ ? He committed the cardinal sin of representing the object of the most intense hatred seen in this country toward any political figure, maybe in its history: President Donald J. Trump. As one observer put it, his major mistake was in representing Trump; had he devoted such zealous advocacy to the representation of Osama Bin Laden, he would have received medals and awards. Here is a statement from his attorney after this illegal, unethical, unconstitutional ruling by a Judge who was a substantial Democrat donor in the past:
“Any reasonable person can see 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 in the profession in which he has long been licensed,” said the statement released by Randy Miller, the California attorney for John C. Eastman, the director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.
“That is not justice and serves no legitimate purpose to protect the public,” Miller said.
***
“Dr. Eastman is facing serious and complex criminal charges in an unprecedented criminal RICO action in Fulton County, Georgia, where one of his co-defendants is the former president of the United States and presumptive Republican nominee for reelection to that office,” Miller said.
“He has not been convicted of any crime and in the eyes of the law he is presumed innocent,” he said.
“Dr. Eastman remains adamant that in his case, that presumption is absolutely correct.”
These bizarre and hateful persecutions have been referred to as “Orwellian” and it is reasonable to believe that George Orwell himself could not have imagined this level of hatred- nor, dare I say, could Kafka although he got very close in The Trial.
Advancing Novel Arguments is a Threat to Our Democracy? Ask Mr. Gideon About That.
There are many available examples of cases which started out as “unique” arguments, scoffed at by observers as ridiculous, but developed into new law, often with salutary results. The Civil Rights movement is certainly a clear example with the arguments made by Thurgood Marshall in Brown v. Board of Education as a crowning achievement in that effort. However, one example which stands out in my mind is the case of Clarence Earl Gideon who, with a very simple filing in the United States Supreme Court, caused the creation of the right of every accused person in the United States, no matter how poor, to have adequate representation through competent counsel. Here is a brief summary of how that case evolved, in a review of the Anthony Lewis book about the case, Gideon’s Trumpet:
Gideon's Trumpet is the story of this extraordinary case, from the night of June 3, 1961, when the Bay Harbor Poolroom was robbed, to the moment that Clarence Earl Gideon walked out of the Panama City, Florida, Courthouse a free man, on August 5, 1963.
Gideon's plea to the United States Supreme Court was deceptively simple: he had been denied a lawyer at the time of his trial for burglary because he could not afford one. To most laymen this would seem to provide grounds for a new trial, but the fact is that until the Supreme Court heard Gideon's case, an indigent prisoner did not have the right to a lawyer in many state courts.
The case of Gideon v. Wainwright changed all that. The Supreme Court decided to hear Gideon's plea, and it appointed Abe Fortas, a noted Washington lawyer, to represent him.
On March 18, 1963, the Court announced its historic decision: the Justices unanimously overruled an earlier case and held that henceforth the "due process of law" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment meant that poverty alone could not deprive a criminal defendant of the right to counsel. For Gideon this meant a new trial, and this time, with the help of a lawyer, he was acquitted.
But Gideon's Trumpet is far more than the dramatic story of a single case whose reverberations will change the lives of thousands of other prisoners; it is also an inspiring examination and interpretation of the role of the Supreme Court itself. The reader learns much of the history of the Court, of the constitutional and criminal law in the United States, of the philosophies of law of various Justices, of changing historical interpretations of the Bill of Rights and its various amendments, and of the modus operandi of the Court day by day.
Anthony Lewis writes about the complex and momentous issues involved in Gideon v. Wainwright with simplicity, clarity and precision, and his portrait of Gideon and his dogged fight for freedom is as poignant and, in the words of one distinguished reader, "as absorbing as the best fiction."
Sadly, we live in an age when disagreement is not only frowned upon, but creative and imaginative “new” legal arguments can get a lawyer disbarred. This is, as one lawyer said about Dr. Eastman’s plight, “wrong on so many levels” because this ruling, if allowed to stand, will affect the rights of many Americans in the future who might seek counsel for “conduct unbecoming the accepted narrative of the day.”
Sir Thomas More had some sage words of wisdom of which this Judge has apparently never heard.
A Man For All Seasons: Give the Devil the Benefit of the Law!
It’s easy enough to sit back and regard this case and the over hundred like it as having little or nothing to do with one’s day-to-day life and while that attitude is understandable it is critically important to recognize the far-reaching impact of decisions like that in the Eastman case for all citizens, not just Trump lawyers. In the play referenced above, there appears this famous exchange, which illustrates this concept better than any I have ever seen:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
Lawfare and the Weaponization of the Law is Tearing This Country Apart and Must End.
It is difficult to find the words to describe the probable reaction the Founding Fathers would have to a ruling like that of Judge Yvette Roland in Dr. Eastman’s case but if forced to choose just one it would surely be: Orwellian. It seems to me that the chattering class of CNNMSNBCNYTWPLATABCCBS would be well advised to consider, just for a moment or two between guffaws about the sad and tragic outcome for Dr. Eastman and his family and the same for President Trump and his family, what precedents like this will mean for some of their “idols” in the future.
When the laws are all cut down… where will those paragons of virtue like Joe and Hunter Biden or Merrick Garland or Alejandro Mayorkas or Comey or McCabe or Brennan or Clapper or Sztrok or Lisa Page or Clinesmith or Hillary Clinton stand?
They might at long last wish they had given “the Devil” the benefit of law.
The actions against John Eastman, come from elitists,progressives, and leftist who "feel " their objectives are being threatened by his representation of Trump. They assemble "entitled " groups to assault him and his family. Is it an assault, by a rabid group? No. They are pawns, cannon fodder, to be discarded at the appropriate time.