Tag Archives: Attorney John Eastman

Free Speech Rights For Lawyers

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On Monday, The Federalist posted an article written by Jay Sekulow and Jordan Sekulow about the disbarment of conservative lawyer John Eastman. John Eastman has an impressive background–he is a former professor and deal at Chapman University School of Law. He has run for political office in California, and he is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The article reports:

Shortly after our personal representation of President Trump in his impeachment acquittal before the U.S. Senate, we warned about what we saw coming. The left was preparing to go after conservative lawyers. Now that unfortunately has come to pass, and it’s exactly what the American Center for Law and Justice is preparing to challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ACLJ is representing Professor John Eastman, a former Trump attorney, in a forthcoming cert petition to the Supreme Court of the United States challenging his disbarment by the state of California.

In the wake of the 2020 election, Eastman, a constitutional scholar and former law school dean, represented President Trump in a number of election-related challenges involving issues upon which no court had weighed in. He was thereafter disbarred by the California Bar following disciplinary proceedings arising from his legal advice, public advocacy, court filings, and speeches regarding the 2020 presidential election. That decision was erroneously upheld by the California Supreme Court.

No court sanctioned Eastman for any of his legal positions, yet the California Bar disbarred him anyway. In essence, Eastman was disbarred for exercising his free speech rights and providing legal counsel to President Trump in the aftermath of the election.

If a state can disbar a conservative attorney for his advocacy — his free speech — by retroactively labeling that advocacy as professional misconduct, then the left will be empowered to wage lawfare against every conservative attorney with whom they disagree.

The article notes:

The implications extend far beyond Eastman. Every attorney who represents a controversial client, advances a novel constitutional theory, or challenges prevailing legal orthodoxy has an interest in ensuring that professional discipline is not used to chill protected advocacy. Today’s unpopular argument may become tomorrow’s accepted precedent. The Constitution protects the freedom to make those arguments in the first place.

Free speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution. Some of the people on the political left need to remember that.

The Double Standard Is Still With Us

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On Monday, Townhall posted an article about John Eastman being disbarred by the California Supreme Court. In 2024, a judge on California’s State Bar Court ordered John Eastman’s disbarment, but the decision was appealed. In the meantime, John Eastman was suspended from practicing law.

The article reports:

The California Supreme Court officially disbarred President Donald Trump’s former attorney, John Eastman, last week over his work assisting Trump to dispute the 2020 election results. Eastman merely provided options for Trump to consider in a legal memo — some of which would have resulted in Joe Biden winning the election — and drafted and filed a brief for him in the election challenge Texas v. Pennsylvania. In contrast, none of the attorneys involved in the 2000 election challenge representing Al Gore over “hanging chads” in Florida were disciplined.

John Eastman’s background is impressive. He is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public-interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He is a former professor and former professor and former dean at Chapman University School of Law. He is also a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At one point he was a frequent guest on the Hugh Hewitt radio show discussing the law and current issues. He is a very clear thinking lawyer. He is a man I would love to see on the Supreme Court. He should not have been disbarred, and I am sure the decision will be appealed.

The article concludes:

Other leftist attorneys around the country are also getting free passes from state bars. Marc Elias, working with Perkins Coie, paid Fusion GPS to produce the Steele dossier and concealed the payment structure in FEC filings. The FEC fined the DNC and Clinton campaign for misreporting the payments as legal services. Special Counsel John Durham prosecuted Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI about whether he was representing the Clinton campaign. Sussmann was later acquitted. Andrew Weissmann aggressively prosecuted Arthur Andersen, destroying the company, but the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction. Critics accused Weissman of Brady violations — failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense and eliciting false testimony from a key government witness. Other witnesses testified that they felt pressured by the prosecution.

The disbarment of Eastman has set a terrible precedent. The law has been used to punish people merely for practicing their profession. Fortunately, the adults on the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to take his appeal. Although they only accept about 80 cases a year, they favor high-profile cases. This issue personally relates to them as lawyers, and Eastman is widely considered the top constitutional scholar on the right.

We have a lot of work to do to clean up our justice system.

The Way Forward…How Do We Unite?

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The way forward has to include a change of direction. Many Americans have been negatively impacted by high inflation, high interest rates, and slow job growth. Hopefully, electing a businessman as President will help change the current situation.

One thing that will unite us is an honest media telling the truth. For example, ‘tax cuts for the rich’ is not only a lie–it is class warfare–a Marxist strategy. The Trump tax cuts benefited the lower and middle economic classes–not the rich. You can find the statistics here.

The biased press coverage by the mainstream media of the 2024 presidential campaign was a disgrace.

According to the Media Research Center:

…on ABC, CBS and NBC was 78% positive vs. 22% negative. For Trump, those numbers were flipped: just 15% positive press, vs. 85% negative coverage. Subtracting Trump’s positive press from Harris’s, the advantage to the Democratic nominee was 63 points, the greatest in the modern media age.

That bias was largely responsible for further dividing our country. Using the Department of Justice to intimidate and prosecute anyone with views opposite of the party in power also divides us. Law enforcement has no business raiding someone’s house because they were protesting abortion or investigating someone because they spoke at a school board meeting. Admittedly there are some political figures who should be prosecuted for their crimes, but not for their political views.

The people who hate President Trump because it is the approved thing to do in their social circles should consider not lying to their friends about what a Trump presidency means. President Trump has been President before. Did he put his political opponents in jail or use the judicial system the harass them? Were any Democrats disbarred or their assets seized during the Trump presidency (like John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani)? Were gay people mistreated or prosecuted? Yes, President Trump’s appointed Supreme Court Justices overturned Roe v. Wade, but even Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that Roe v. Wade was bad law.

The past predicts the future. During the first term of President Trump we had peace and prosperity. Can we unite in the hope of achieving that again?

This Could Be Anyone’s Future

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One of the things President Trump repeatedly says that to me is cringeworthy is, “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” The fact that the statement is cringeworthy to me doesn’t mean it is not true. Aside from the injustice currently happening in New York, the injustice being done to John Eastman is a disgrace to America.

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported:

One of the left’s biggest political targets recently found himself “de-banked” with no warning and little avenue for recourse, the Daily Caller has learned.

John Eastman, once an attorney for former President Donald Trump, was de-banked twice in the span of several months by two prominent financial institutions, Bank of America and USAA, he told the Daily Caller. His accounts were closed as he faced substantial backlash for his work advising Trump around the time of the 2020 election.

Eastman said he had switched most of his banking from Bank of America to USAA, a company that provides financial services exclusively to military veterans as well as their families, due to the former’s “wokeness.” Both corporations are federally insured, and Bank of America was bailed out with billions of dollars in taxpayer funds during the global financial crisis.

Bank of America alerted Eastman in September of 2023 that it would be closing his accounts, a letter obtained by the Daily Caller shows. Shortly thereafter, USAA notified Eastman in November that his two bank accounts with the company would be closed, a separate letter shows.

The article concludes:

A number of red state attorneys general — including from Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana and Montana — voiced their opposition to the de-banking trend after the Daily Caller laid out Eastman’s situation. Many of the state AGs pointed to politics as a potential reason Eastman’s accounts were closed.

“No American should lose their bank account because banks want to play politics. Time and time again, we are seeing banks target and cut off those they disagree with and refuse to explain why. That is unacceptable,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told the Daily Caller.

“De-banking contradicts the very character of our nation, as elites wrongfully use their power to punish their political opponents. Here’s the bottom line: If financial institutions are punishing consumers who don’t fall in line with their political beliefs, that could constitute a violation of both state and federal law,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told the Daily Caller.

Now, Eastman is being prosecuted by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis as part of her case against Trump. On March 27, a California judge ruled that Eastman should be disbarred due to his legal advice in the wake of the 2020 election. The case will now move to the state Supreme Court for a final decision.

“I just think this is a terrible trend. I think it’s harmful. I think it prohibits people from bringing their values and the public square into the marketplace. And they have every constitutional right under the Free Exercise clause to bring their values into the marketplace. And I think this is also I think this is something we’re just gonna have to fight against,” Sam Brownback, an attorney and former U.S. Senator whose Christian non-profit was de-banked, told the Daily Caller.

Our current government is enacting the Chinese Communist social credit system right before our eyes.

When Good People Are Attacked

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On April 1, The Blaze posted an article about John Eastman.

The article reports:

John Eastman is a patriot, a constitutional scholar, a lawyer, a husband, and a father. He is our friend, colleague, and fellow board member of the Claremont Institute, and he has spent his life defending the principles upon which this great nation was founded. After a 10-week travesty of a trial, a California Bar Court judge, seeking to criminalize disagreements in constitutional interpretation, recommended that John should lose his license to practice law in California.

The term “lawfare” has become part of the American vernacular in the past few years. It means the manipulation and corruption of the legal system to gain political advantage and attack and destroy one’s political opponents. The most famous example of lawfare is, of course, the shocking abuse of the U.S. Department of Justice, the attorney general’s office in the state of New York, and the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Georgia, in an attempt to destroy the current Republican candidate for the presidency, Donald J. Trump. But the assault on Trump is just the most widely publicized example of this evil practice, which is destroying the rule of law in America.

A previous article on that site about John Eastman included a statement from his children:

Eastman has prepared his whole life to fight years of coordinated attacks and lawfare. His encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of the law are informed by years of study of political philosophy, which culminated in a Ph.D. in government at the once-famous Claremont Graduate School under giants such as Harry V. Jaffa. His law degree is from the University of Chicago, one of the top law schools in the country. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He served as professor of constitutional law and dean of Chapman Law School for decades. He is the founder of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute.

Our dad is well equipped for this battle, and while some individuals have lent their support to his efforts, too many have remained on the sidelines.

With the soul of our justice system at stake, it’s time for others to join the fight.

What has happened to the rule of law under the Biden administration is a serious threat to our Republic (we are not a democracy–we are a representative republic). Lawyers who were planning to represent President Trump have been threatened. People who were part of the Trump administration have been spied on illegally, and some have been put in jail. How long will it be before the rest of us who support equal justice under the law will be silenced?

 

The Harassment Continues

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On Tuesday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted an article about Attorney John Eastman. Attorney Eastman has an impressive record as an attorney. He is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the conservative think tank Claremont Institute. He is a former professor and dean at the Chapman University School of Law. He is also a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

His phone was recently seized by the FBI as he was leaving a restaurant. He was not shown a warrant for the seizure until after his phone was taken.

On Monday, The Washington Times reported:

Eastman said the agents who approached him identified themselves as from the FBI but appeared to be serving a warrant on behalf of the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, which he contends has no jurisdiction to investigate him since he has never worked for the department. He said the cell phone that was seized contains emails that have been the subject of a months-long dispute between him and the House panel.

“That litigation has received extensive media attention, so it is hard to imagine that the Department of Justice, which apparently submitted the application for the warrant at issue here, was not aware of it,” wrote his lawyers, Charles Burnham and Joseph Gribble. 

There is little doubt that Attorney Eastman’s phone was seized because of his work on behalf of President Trump to investigate election fraud.

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

The AP covers the story here. Orin Kerr takes up the legality of the search and seizure in a Twitter thread here. We remain to be illuminated on the criminal law for which the FBI claims it has probable cause against Eastman. Late in the thread he notes that the warrant does not extend beyond the seizure of John’s phone (i.e., it covers seizure only).

Eastman’s close encounter with the FBI last week was obviously coordinated with the close encounters of Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark and Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald. The FBI appears to have taken up the role of the ruling party’s enforcement arm.

We are rapidly approaching banana-republic status if we have not reached it already.