Former Chapman law dean Eastman’s bar hearings wind down

A day after the hearing officer in his disciplinary proceedings found former Chapman University law school dean John Eastman preliminarily culpable for his conduct representing former President Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden, Eastman was defiant in his testimony that the case against him was politically motivated.

In the final day of the hearings at the State Bar of California courtroom in downtown Los Angeles that started in June, Eastman took the stand once again Thursday to defend his actions following the 2020 presidential election.

Eastman was asked if he said in an online interview during the proceedings that the attorneys for the bar should be disbarred, he acknowledged that they have immunity, but added they should lose their law license if not for that.

“I disagree I made false statements,” Eastman responded to the bar’s attorney. “But you clearly made false statements.”

Eastman added that, “In my view none of the conduct (as an attorney for Trump) violated any ethical standards of the California bar.”

State Bar attorney Duncan Carling also pointed out a fundraising letter Eastman sent out that accused “activist lawyers” of going after him with the bar complaint. Eastman said he did not personally use those words but the letter went out in his name.

“We’ve gone on for 10 weeks now and it’s rather expensive” to defend himself, Eastman said of the fundraiser.

“But for my affiliation with Trump we wouldn’t be here,” Eastman said.

Eastman declared the bar proceeding as “unprecedented,” and that he was facing disbarment because, “I was a representative of President Trump, who, in many circles of this country, is not very liked.”

Eastman said that he engaged in “good faith” arguments regarding claims of fraud in the election.

“I’ve not heard any challenge to my allegations that there was illegality in respect to the election, and the question whether those illegalities open the door to fraud are very hard to prove,” Eastman said.

He also defended his belief that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block the certification of Biden’s election. Eastman argued that it remained “unsettled” law regarding the vice president’s authority.

But at one point during the weeks of testimony during the proceedings, the hearing’s judicial officer Yvette D. Roland pointed out that in all the years since the Electoral Count Act was established in 1887 no one has sued to challenge its constitutionality.

Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob, however, testified early in the proceedings that he did not believe his former boss had any authority in the certification of the election beyond the ceremonial reading of the results from the Electoral College.

Eastman has argued that Pence could have delayed the certification to allow for state legislatures to continue looking to see if there was enough fraud to affect the results.

Jacob emphasized to Eastman and Trump in a meeting shortly before the Jan. 6 riots outside the Capitol that in the entire country’s history no vice president had ever asserted himself into the electoral vote certification.

In fact, Jacob said, that when a dispute arose in Hawaii in the 1960 election that then-Vice President Richard Nixon, who lost to President John Kennedy, opened three envelopes of slates of electors and to save time said he believed the one favoring Kennedy was the correct one and Congress did not oppose it.

Roland handed down a ruling of preliminary culpability as a way to streamline the hearings to focus on evidence of aggravation or mitigation. The attorneys on both sides are expected to submit further arguments in paper by Nov. 22 and then Roland will issue a ruling within 90 days from then.

Eastman’s attorney Randall Miller argued for further hearings so Eastman could rebut one of the state bar’s expert witnesses, but Roland rejected that request.

“I’m not going to add more days,” she said.

Miller said in all of the discussions about the “choreographing” of evidence it was assumed Eastman would get a chance to rebut the final expert witness, but Roland said, “You have a different choreographer than I do.”

Bo Dul, who worked as an elections officer in Arizona, testified about she received so many threats from angry voters, who publicly released where she lived, that she had to install a security camera at home and police had to beef up patrols around her neighborhood.

She also had to be given a special parking spot in the basement because security officials did not think it was safe for her to walk across the parking structure to her office, she said.

Dul said elections offices are seeing “significant turnover” due to election misinformation and the “toxic environment that surrounds elections now and the increased pressure and stress on election workers.”

She ridiculed the so-called “Cyber Ninjas” who examined the elections results.

“They were using microscopes to see if there were bamboo fibers to show if the ballots were from China,” she said. “As the process went on it became more and more ridiculous.”

Eastman’s attorneys objected to the testimony saying that their client did not say anything to provoke these responses to elections officials, but Roland overruled them.

“It is clear Dr. Eastman has made statements that the election was stolen in his words … or there were irregularities that led people to believe this,” she said. “This is certainly relevant evidence.”

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