John Eastman’s sedition has already cost him his teaching gigs.
Now, an email has surfaced that could cost him his license to practice law, too.
In January 2021, just days after the Capitol riot, he lost his faculty position at Chapman University Law School and his University of Colorado teaching assignments (details here).
The email, filed as a court exhibit on March 2, 2022 (view it here), urged Vice President Mike Pence, through his lawyer Gregory F. Jacob, to break the law.
Eastman, a Trump lawyer deeply involved in scheming to overturn the 2020 election, was trying to get Pence to refuse to certify the electoral votes of several states. In this email he “conceded … the plan was a violation of the Electoral Count Act” but claimed “it was only a ‘minor violation’ of the statute that governed the certification procedure,” the Guardian reported on March 10, 2022 (read story here).
That’s damning, because while lawyers have considerable latitude to argue for new interpretations of law, knowingly trying to get someone to break the law is a serious ethical violation reflecting on fitness to practice law. This email is such a smoking gun because, in it, Eastman admits he’s pushing an illegal scheme.
Ethics complaints were already filed against Eastman with the California bar in October and December 2021 (see stories here and here). This email can, and likely will, be used in those proceedings to argue that Eastman is unfit to practice law. I agree with that. This was no “minor violation.” It was nothing less than an attempt to deny the 81 million voters for Biden their right to choose our country’s leadership. For that, Eastman deserves to be disbarred.
Video below: Eastman shouts his “demands” at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally preceding the Capitol riot.