A panel of three judges with the Review Department at the State Bar of California, which is the appellate level for the bar, heard oral arguments on Wednesday in John Eastman’s appeal of a bar disciplinary judge disbarring the former Trump attorney. During the two hour hearing, the argument by the bar’s attorney Michelle Lee focused on claiming that Eastman lied when he said there was election fraud, since she said there was never any evidence of election fraud produced from the 2020 election. Eastman represented Trump intervening in the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit over the election, and wrote a memo for Trump advising him of various options to deal with the election wrongdoing — including scenarios where Joe Biden would ultimately win.
Alex Haberbush, a constitutional attorney based in Long Beach, California, who served as legal counsel to Eastman, told The Tennessee Star, “The notion that Dr. Eastman knew his claims about fraud and illegality in the 2020 election were false is patently absurd and totally unsupported by the record from the Hearing Department. Especially in light of the fact that the claims were true. As subsequent reports and investigations have come out, Dr. Eastman’s claims have only been more and more vindicated.”
Lee began her argument by stating, “Respondent made repeated and intentional false statements to the courts the media and Vice President Pence that the 2020, presidential election had been stolen from Trump as a candidate who was his client through outcomes of determinative fraud, and that there were legally valid Trump electors available to stop this deal.” She referred to fraud again further on, “Respondent knew that his statistical evidence was not evidence of fraud.”
However, Eastman focused his legal representation of Trump on addressing other laws that were broken, not on fraud, which is difficult to prove due to the necessity of showing multiple elements. Fraud must be proven in court, so Eastman could not have proven fraud before all of the cases were brought.
Read the rest of the article at The Tennessee Star