On Wednesday, the leftist California Supreme Court disbarred brilliant constitutional scholar John Eastman. His mortal sin was zealous representation of a client—President Donald Trump—during the dispute over the 2020 election. Eastman committed no crime; indeed, his sham Georgia indictment was dropped after disgraced Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ disqualification from the case. What the California Supreme Court did was a legal disgrace that occurs generally in banana republics, not in the United States.
The 2020 election was razor-close. If approximately 20,000 votes in three states—Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—had switched, President Trump would have defeated Joe Biden, according to official results. The problem with the election, of course, involved the unprecedented rewriting of election laws by courts in many states due to the coronavirus pandemic. States began mailing ballots to addresses even when no one at the addresses had asked for a ballot. This led to ballots that were mailed to homes long after the addressees had left. States also scrapped signature verification requirements because, apparently, the coronavirus altered signatures. States allowed random people to drop off votes in so-called drop boxes that were publicly accessible. In short, the election was a mess that, thanks to its closeness, led to justified suspicion and calls for investigations.
At the forefront of those calling for investigations was President Trump, who reasonably requested election audits. He challenged results in several states and hired a bevy of attorneys to assist him. One of them was Eastman, a distinguished law professor and constitutional scholar who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. Eastman came up with a strategy to challenge the certification of results in a lawful way. The Electoral Count Act of 1887, following the commands of the Constitution, detailed procedures by which the House and Senate would certify electoral vote tallies. Eastman sought to defeat certification by the House and Senate in several contested states.
As part of Eastman’s plan, several slates of alternative electors from the disputed states were available to vote for President Trump should the need arise. These were not “fake electors,” as leftists have claimed. The same scenario played out in the hotly contested presidential election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden. It also occurred regarding the disputed election in Hawaii in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. No reasonable person believed that these electors were trying to impersonate in the way that, for instance, one would impersonate a police officer. Instead, they were on standby in the event that Congress failed to certify election results and sent the matter back to the states. This is the course that Eastman urged Vice President Mike Pence to adopt; that is, Pence should have, according to Eastman, called for the disputed states to reexamine their electoral certifications in light of the many reasonable questions that had arisen due to election irregularities.
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Eastman also appeared at the Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol with President Trump. Eastman gave a speech and explicitly stated that what he and the president were seeking was lawful. The Electoral Count Act is an arcane law drafted nearly a century and a half ago. Congress agreed; that is why it passed the Electoral Count Reform Act during the Biden administration to clarify the law. Eastman never advocated in favor of bribing anyone, threatening anyone with violence or discarding lawful votes. Rather, he endeavored to ensure that all legal votes were counted. The same goes for President Trump, who exercised his First Amendment right to advocate for the overturning of an election that he believed with every fiber of his being to have been rigged. It is not a crime to advocate for overturning an election; indeed, the First Amendment, contrary to the views of deranged special counsel Jack Smith, allows for just that.
Even though he broke no laws, Eastman shockingly now stands disbarred. The criminal lawfare against him in the form of Willis’ farcical indictment failed, but this kangaroo court has accomplished its abhorrent goal. There is another lawyer whose legal fate awaits judgment: Jeff Clark, an exceptional legal mind who served in President Trump’s Justice Department. Clark stands accused of the risible offense of “attempted dishonesty” by the District of Columbia Bar. His case awaits a decision by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, D.C.’s highest court. The Article III Project proudly filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Clark’s behalf because he, like Eastman, did nothing to warrant disbarment. The California Supreme Court failed John Eastman and the legal profession with its ignominious decision. Let us pray that the D.C. Court of Appeals comes to the commonsense conclusion that Jeff Clark did nothing wrong and deserves exoneration.
